Chapter 1: "Once again, the UV index is going to be through the roof. If you have to venture out of doors during the day, you want to wear at least SPF 45 sunblock on all exposed skin, and certainly cover your eyes. 9:00AM temperature is going to be around 30 degrees with ozone and humidity driving the heat index up to a scorching 49 degrees by noon. Make sure you wear respiratory protection out there, and try to stay away from street level as much as possible." The weatherman's voice droned on in a flat monotone with all the enthusiasm of a well fed cat. "Oh, shut up, will you?" Marissa hated that man, just for his voice. The flat, nasal monotone never failed to disrupt any kind of concentration she had, regardless of circumstances. As usual with the lab's TV, nothing happened. The camera left the weatherman and went back to the news desk. The anchorman was starting in on the sporting news, following the Sprawl Brawl playoffs. As usual, the 2044 champion Seattle Fury was wiping the floor with the opposition. For some reason, the news report derailed her train of thought. She sighed and blew a stray forelock out of her face. Dr. Chiang shook her head and fumbled around for the remote control, not bothering to pull the computer interface jack out of the base of her skull. The slick plastic ingot had managed to burrow its way into her desk drawer again, hiding beneath a rack of data chips. She fumbled around for it and killed the television. The screen went a light gray, softly luminescing as residual power drained from the old integrated circuits. "Stupid archaic piece of junk." All the state of the are, billion credit computers, gadgets, and gizmos, and here she was with an antiquated television that didn't even have voice recognition. Marissa sighed and stretched, wincing as her long raven hair caught on the data jack's plug. Somehow her hair had managed to make its way onto her back again. As usual, it had gotten tangled up with the fiber optic cable that ran into her brain stem. She untangled the cable and set it down on the desk in front of her. She stood, hunched over from a long day in a couch, and pressed the heels of her hands to the small of her back. She closed her eyes and stood up rapidly, pressing her hips forward with her hands. Marissa drew a long breath through her teeth as her spine straightened with satisfying crackles that resonated through the motionless air. Disconnected from the VR lab, Marissa looked around at the smooth, featureless white walls. The plain plastic room had no ornament or color. Everyone else had gone home. Banks of supercomputers formed a row of gray metal obelisks lining the back wall, and the empty desks were spaced out in neat rows. Marissa stood and walked around the lab, listening to her footfalls. They died against the soundproof, windowless walls. The doctor laughed. When she had first come to work here, she had called it the deadest place life could be created. Lately, it had been home. She walked until her circulation came back and the pins and needles in her legs went away, combing her fingers through her tangled mass of hair. Perhaps she should get a haircut. One of those new bob-cuts that had been popular a century ago and was popular again. Something about the centennial of the atom bomb. Then again... maybe she'd pass on the hack job after all. Marissa settled back into the VR couch and picked up the data jack. There were hairs in it again. She rolled her eyes and plucked them out, one at a time. "I have got to get one of those new subdermals." She made a note to remind herself to request one the next time Artemis held company-wide physicals. After 15 years working for AO, she deserved an upgrade. The new data jacks were simple little pads that were implanted under the skin and stuck magnetically to the connector wire. No more long metal plugs to rip her hair out. She pulled her tresses over her shoulder, holding the uncooperative ponytail close to her chest and adjusted the data jack. She blinked once, and instantly the laboratory disappeared, replaced by the neon and midnight virtual landscape where Bioengineering really did its work. She floated in cyberspace, with a classic John Williams score playing muted in the background. Her only company was Close Encounters of the Third Kind and kilometers of carefully prepared simulated DNA. She was almost done. Marissa scanned the log. There were only ten thousand more genes to check for errors and then she'd be done. She found a mistake in a gene, one that regulated insulin production. "Can't have you being a diabetic on us, can we? You've got to be a tougher critter than that." As it was, the mistake looked like it would cause the onset of juvenile diabetes and possibly cancer of the pancreas later in life. Dr. Chiang took hold of the sequence and snipped it out, examining it more closely. "Analyze the composition of this sequence, would you?" Hopefully the computer had something that would work ready made. The last time something like this happened it cost her three months of work reprogramming the whole piece from scratch. "Processing request." The computer's flat, digital voice paused for a moment. "Request complete. This sequence is 97 percent identical to archived human DNA segment number 17623-98586. Recommended course of action is to recover the archived segment and modify the template for your use." Marissa shook her digital fist at the voice. The damn machine was always pointing out the obvious. One of these days she was going to have to get a tech to fix that. "Great. Go ahead and bring it up for me, would you?" She set the bungled sequence down and waited. The computer complied, loading up a copy of the gene in question. It appeared, floating in space in front of her. Dr. Chiang smiled. "Thanks." As usual, the computer didn't respond. Unlike most of the interns, it did its job, and then shut up. She set the two sequences alongside each other, magnifying the images to the point where she could see the individual chemical bonds, glass spires holding the delicate looking spirals of DNA together. She bent close to compare the two, pair by pair by pair. "Let's see now, what's the matter with you?" The problem was so small she missed it the first time. One lousy depurination. A tiny group of base pairs out of alignment threw off the entire gene, warping the structure of the entire DNA molecule from that point onwards. No wonder it wasn't working. She shook her head. "What a mess. This must've been your fault, Matt." Her senior partner tended to get sloppy when he worked late. She fixed the error, inserting the repaired sequence back into the enormous computer simulated genome. She rubbed her hands together. "Well, that's that. Now let's see if you work." She called up a doorway and opened it, breaking the connection to cyberspace and replacing it with the laboratory itself. A tiny holographic image of the genome floated atop the computer, rotating slowly. She unplugged the neural jack from her neck and massaged her stiff muscles. In cyberspace, a body never got tired. In the real world, however, things weren't quite so perfect. Now it was time to see if the last year and a half of work was going to pay off or not. Marissa Chiang took a deep breath and stood. She whispered a quick prayer and turned to the computer. "Alright, you. Begin compile." Indicator lights came on green as the powerful super computer awoke with a growl like ancient muscle car. A hundred processors flared to life and made her teeth ache. Despite the liquid helium cooling system that kept the machine from melting down, the temperature of the room rose slightly as the huge computer read the entire genome in an instant. Soon it was going to try and use it. If the new genome worked, then a viable fertilized egg could be easily manufactured and stored for further study or actually implanted and an individual grown. "Processing genome and beginning growth simulation. DNA transcription and replication successful." Two seconds. "Meiosis successful. Gametes created." Three seconds. "Fertilization successful. Zygote created. Beginning growth and differentiation. Please wait. Estimating embryo viability." Marissa clenched her fists close to her chest pumped her arms. She leaped out of her chair. Her heart felt as if it might burst. "Yes!" Victory! They had never gotten this far before. The genome was actually working! She took a deep breath and stopped, watching the computer work. Suddenly, she felt very tired. She looked over at the clock. It read 3:30AM. Had it been fifteen hours already? Her work done for the moment, the adrenaline that had kept her going all day vanished as though a drain had been opened inside her. Dr. Marissa Chiang slumped back in her chair, propped her chin up with the heel of her hand, and promptly nodded off into the dreamless sleep of the exhausted. * Dr. Jenner pulled the blinds up, letting the sunlight in through the two centimeter thick plate glass. Intense golden light brightened the room and played across the occupied bed, turning Marissa's black hair a fiery reddish brown. The only places in the Artemis facility that had sunlight anymore were the executive residences built above cloud level. At the moment, she could have dealt very well without the dubious benefit of living there. The faint rustle of synthetic polymers from the bed announced that Marissa was awake. She rolled over and buried her head in the blanket, snugging closer to the down filled body pillow that rested against her. She woke up some more. Eventually she must have realized that she was in her own apartment. She threw off the covers and sat bolt upright. "What the hell?" "Welcome back to the land of the living." Matt Jenner laughed and closed the blinds again. "You've been asleep all day Marissa." He spoke with a sotto voce baritone voice that might of made him famous in showbiz had he not been so asthmatic that he couldn't breathe and talk for more than five minutes at a time. "What time is it?" Marissa yawned and grimaced. She rubbed at her eyes and stretched. "Ugh. I feel lousy." Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth and she looked like she needed a shower. Matt chuckled and walked over to the dresser. There was a briefcase on it. He started flipping through it, not looking back as Marissa stretched. "Oh, around 5:00 PM. You've been asleep for over twelve hours." He turned around, clutching a disc in his hands, a broad, schoolboy-in-a-candy store grin on his face. "But it worked." He slipped the disc into his laptop and turned it on. The trideo projector came to life. It presented, standing in anatomy textbook position a miniature holograph of the results of the last decade's work, slowly rotating midair. "Beautiful, isn't it? A 99.4 percent chance of survival to adulthood." Dr. Jenner suddenly seized her by the hands and hugged her tightly. Caught off guard, Marissa yelped in surprise and then laughed. Jenner grinned and let go of her. She blinked once and sat back, rubbing away old makeup and oversleep. "Wow." There was nothing else to say. "Finally." She sat up, swinging her feet to the cream plush carpet. Realization of her location dawned on her and she stood abruptly. "Hey, how did you get in here?" "I used your key." Jenner shrugged nonchalantly and shut down the computer. "I came into work and I found you sleeping in my chair. The modeling was done for over eleven hours." "Oh. Hey, hand me my bathrobe, would you?" Jenner tossed her the purple silk robe. "How long had you been working in there?" She walked into the bathroom and shut the door. "Hmmm." Her voice echoed off tiles and there was the sound of curtains being drawn. "I don't know. Twenty four, maybe thirty hours since I was home? I finished the new sequencing early and went on to the proofing. Hmmm... forty degrees, please." Doors slid closed and water started running in the shower. "Dr. Jenner?" She had to shout to be heard over her shower. "Yes?" "Now what?" Matt Jenner sat down on her bed and put his feet up, leaning against her still warm body pillow. The whole bed was covered with the cool lingering scent of perfume not long ago applied. "Well, I've already started assembling the production cell and the archive. When they're done we can take the backup apart and follow our progress." He crossed his legs at the ankle and stretched out, enjoying the warm sun on his chest. While Marissa showered, he basked, soaking in the sunlight. He looked around the bedroom and listened to Marissa sing. The bed was nestled in the corner of the room, a double waterbed covered with sheer white linen sheets and piled high with pillows. The antique blanket had the twin symbols of the Chinese dragon and phoenix woven into it. Silk screens depicting long destroyed oriental landscapes were arranged around the room and added color to the plain cream colored walls. Her late mother's dresser was set near the closet, underneath a mirror set into the wall. The golden teak glowed in the sunlight, adding a warm cast to the jade tiger that prowled among Marissa's personal items. He called out to her. "Looks like it's going to be mostly downhill from here." "Great." The water stopped and the curtains parted. The faucet started. She was brushing her teeth. "How long before it finishes?" "Give it a couple days, Marissa. Besides, there are a couple other things we need to do first. We need to give a report on our progress, and we also need to move into the second phase of the project." "Do you have a tissue match?" The bathroom door slid open and Marissa, wrapped up in her bathrobe, padded into the room. Matt watched her legs for a couple seconds until she noticed him and the steam coming from the bathroom drove him to coughing. Marissa frowned and shooed him away. "Stop that, you dirty old man!" Jenner smirked and nodded after he caught his breath and looked out the window as Marissa hunted around for clothes. "Yes. I put together a list of prospective surrogates within the facility. I was hoping you could handle the selection process. Unless you would rather go to Charlotte and give the report to Operations." Marissa repressed a shiver. "No thank you. I hate those people." Operations handled the allocation of funds to special projects for Artemis Omnitechnology. "Always on our backs about budget overruns and lagging behind schedule. If they hired someone who knew what he was doing we wouldn't have this kind of problem." She pulled the closet door shut behind her. "I don't see how you can deal with those leeches." Her voice was distant and muffled through the heavy wooden door. Operations was the bunch of morons that had put the project in the position it was in. They couldn't see a reason to pay even more for a cloning facility when a human surrogate mother could be hired for a lot less overhead. "It's easy. They're the ones that sign all the checks. If the pursuit of success means toadying up to those short sighted pencil pushers, then so be it. As long as they control the purse strings, then we have no other option. Unless, of course, you would rather do things their way." Several things fell off of shelves behind the closet door, followed by muffled cursing in Cantonese. "No thank you. I'm just glad you're going and not I." She emerged wrapped in long purple robe and went over to the mirror, brushing a night's worth of knots and snarls out of her long,, night black hair. Her smooth, olive complexioned hands wrapped delicately around the antique, mother of pearl brush her grandmother had given her. "How big is the list?" "Only five people on location here are close enough matches for acceptable risk of rejection. And one of them is you. That leaves a potential four candidates. I ruled you out, even if the computer didn't." Jenner turned and looked out the window, down at the heavy, gray green cloud layer that hung like a miasma over Manhattan island, some sixty meters below. "Your help is way too precious and the risks are much too high for me to allow that." Marissa stopped mid brush stroke, set it down, and turned to face Dr. Jenner's back. "Doctor, you sound as if I might want to be the subject of our own experiment. Don't you know be better than that by now?" Her hands came to rest on her silk clad hips and she glared at him. "What do you take me for anyway?" Matt Jenner turned around and smiled. The robe rested weightlessly over his young partner's slight, flawless frame. He smiled and held up his hands placatingly. "Hey, sorry!" She rolled her eyes and snorted. "It was just a joke, Mari. Take it easy already!" "That's Dr. Chiang to you, sir." She mock-glared at him, fixing his grey blue eyes with her almond shaped brown ones. She broke down and smiled. "Get out of here. I'm going to get dressed. I'll see you back at the lab later." "Yes ma'am." Dr. Jenner flashed her a broad, perfect smile and disappeared out the front door. He paused and pressed his ear to the door. Inside, Marissa let out a whoop and flopped down on the bed, making a splashing sound. It had worked! Finally, after years of failure, he had perfected his technique and his great work was soon to be completed. He smiled broadly to nobody in particular and laughed aloud as visions of Nobel Prizes danced before his eyes. All he had to do now was wait for Marissa find a way to literally keep their project alive and select one of the four women on his list to become part of one of the biggest events of the century. * In the three years since coming to work for Artemis Omnitechnologies, Jessica Bradley had become accustomed to consistency. The mark of small minds had, without fail, dominated her life. The only reminder she had left that she had once been full of hope and promise was a plain framed document that collected dust in one corner of her tiny cubicle reading, "New Jersey Institute of Technology, Summa Cum Laude." Usually, her diploma was hidden from view by stack after stack of data chips full of requests for help from the technologically illiterate that would keep her busy from 8:00AM until 5:00PM. This morning, however, the stacks were gone. Jessica sat down at her desk and spun her chair around warily, on the lookout for some kind of low brow office humor. Everyone else was already logging into the information services support subsystem. She started going through her archive drawers. There was nothing amiss there. This didn't happen. Artemis Omnitech never let anyone on its payroll get paid to do nothing. However, long standing company policy did not change the fact that there was only one thing on her desk, and it wasn't any work to do. She just caught it out of the corner of her eye as she was getting up to go and see her supervisor about the problem. She didn't want to be fired for poor productivity. It was a small, white, letter sized envelope. "What have we got here?" She sat back down, looking closely at the plain package. Hand written on the envelope was her name. Gingerly, she picked it up. It was made of real paper. Heavy, part cotton bond that only real VIP's ever saw, let alone wrote on. Nothing came on paper anymore. Electronic communication via the net was easier, and cheaper. She ran her long, alabaster fingers through her nondescript brown hair and chewed on her lightly glossed lower lip. "Somebody must think I'm important. Even the envelope is real paper." There was only one way to find out what she had done to merit a handwritten memo set down on paper. Jessica took one long, gloss lacquered fingernail, and slit the sealed envelope open at the top. She sat down and unfolded the paper, careful not to smudge her skin oils or sunblock on it. Settling back in her office chair, she crossed her legs and started reading. The one sentence note was from bioengineering. "Please come to suite 40018 ASAP. Thanks." She turned the paper over, and did it again. That was it? One line of large, spidery cursive written hand written in slightly smudged black ink. "What the hell?" She blinked once and opened her archive drawers again. Sifting through hundreds of chips that represented the last ten weeks of work, she didn't find a single request from Bio-E. Which meant that this couldn't be related to her job... didn't it? "What's up, Jessie?" The sudden appearance of the voice at her elbow almost made her jump onto her desk. She whirled around, finding her face to face Dave Perriman's broad, round features. "You okay?" The managing engineer clasped his hands behind his back and took a step away, giving her room to breathe. "God, Dave, you scared the hell out of me!" Jessica leaned against her desk, holding the note in both hands. Dave's all black synth-silk outfit matched his nearly ebony skin. When he stood still, they blurred together against the plain white walls, a pair of ice blue cybereyes staring out from a spectral body. It was a creepy look Dave Perriman relished. He cracked a smile, a stark white crescent that stood out like his bizarre eyes. "You're jumpy today." He looked around her cubicle. "That's odd, looks like you've got a pretty light load today. Or did we miss something?" Dave blinked. When his eyes opened, they stared through Jessica as if she weren't there. She could see text scrolling on his artificial corneas as he accessed the department database by remote and viewed it on built in HUD. He blinked again and looked back at her. "That's strange. Says you're on vacation." "What?" "Says you're not supposed to be here. You're on mandatory paid leave of absence." A single arched eyebrow indicated that Dave was absolutely baffled. "Are you sure?" Jessica's eyes traveled down to the note in her hands. She slowly unfolded it. "Hey, what's in your hand?" Wordlessly, she handed him the note. He read it twice and handed it back. "You sure you aren't sick or anything?" He reached out and put his hand against her forehead. 37 degrees Centigrade. Perfectly normal. "Doesn't look like it." "I know. Should I go?" Dave nodded. "Yeah. I checked it over on the project list, and everyone's assignments are exactly normal. Nobody's overloaded, so whoever wants you up there made sure we didn't get swamped. You better get going. I'll look into it and give you a call, all right?" Jessica smiled and picked up her handbag. "Thanks, Dave." He nodded and stepped back, letting her past. "Sure. I'll catch you later." * ISS exited onto one of the lower floors of the Artemis Omnitechnology Manhattan Arcology. Jessica passed through the automatic double doors and walked out onto the balcony. She leaned against the railing and looked down at the Statue of Liberty, moved indoors in 2020 to save the monument from further pollution damage. Now it stood safely in the middle of the Arcology's ground level atrium and auxiliary air filtration system, old Central Park. Inside the two meter thick walls of Artemis' city in a bottle, trees could actually still flourish in the artificial sunlight. The monorail showed up and the doors slid open. "Train to main elevators, consumer relations, information services, mail services, and mainframe control." She walked in and sat near the far window, watching the Statue recede in the distance as the monorail's doors closed and it took off on its maglev track. Jessica stared out the window, watching the arcology blur by as the monorail sped towards the next stop. She wondered what Bio-E wanted. A-O's third largest department had its own staff of technicians who only worked on its own private domain within the Artemis Arcology. Regular support staff rarely got to go up to the 400th floor, if ever. And then it was likely just to fix some executive assistant's dumb terminal or change out a burnt interface jack. And those requests came into Tech support just like the rest, through the local network. That was how things normally worked, anyway. She looked at the piece of paper neatly folded in her hands. That alone screamed abnormal. Combined with the fact that she was officially on a paid vacation, it was outright bizarre. "Please stand clear of the door. This train is now arriving at the main elevator complex." The monorail glided to a stop and the doors opened onto the massive central column that housed most of the public elevators serving the arcology. Jessica slung her handbag over her shoulder, tried to look nonchalant, and walked out. The urge was irresistible. She stood stock still and craned her neck back, staring up at the huge reinforced concrete tower that loomed above her, stretching to the very top of the 800 story structure. From her vantage point on the 21st floor, the elevator tower looked like it was leaning over, prevented from toppling only by the massive buttresses that doubled as walkways to the monorail track, holding the spire in place at the center of the arcology and anchoring it fast to the impregnable walls. She walked into a potted Japanese Maple and a wave of vertigo turned her insides to jelly. She returned her gaze to eye level and grabbed hold of the handrail to steady herself. She looked around, found nobody watching, and headed for the elevator. For the first time since she had come to work here, Jessica pressed her palm against the first handprint scanner she came across. "Bradley, Jessica. Identification successful. Please proceed to elevator number 72." Jessica jogged around the tower until she found the right elevator. The doors were open so she walked in. There were no buttons in the elevator, and as the doors closed, Jessica was vaguely aware of a growing sense of claustrophobia as the comparatively tiny elevator car pressed in on her. "Please present identification." A small screen, about the size of her ID card, lit up. She fumbled around in her bag, found her card, and pressed it to the scanner. "Verifying identification. Please wait." Jessica folded her arms and waited. Silently the doors closed and the elevator started moving upwards, slowly at first and then rapidly gaining speed in its smooth ascent. Bad renditions of early 2010's music drifted sleepily from speakers in each corner of the elevator car. Jessica shook her head. Had her ID not cleared, the elevator would have served its other function, releasing Neurostun nerve gas from the canisters hidden in the speakers and taking her unconscious body to the main security station on the ground floor. The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors opened and Jessica walked out onto a platform just like the one she had been on before, except that the sign read "400" instead of "21." She walked across the bridge to the monorail stop and paused. She looked over the handrail down into the abyss. The arcology disappeared to a single tiny point somewhere almost a mile below. Her knees wobbled and started to buckle. Fortunately, the monorail arrived and she gladly hurried into its spacious confines. * The only thing that distinguished Bioengineering from any other department on the floor was the security desk next to the set of sliding double doors that separated the labs from the rest of the complex. A nineteensomething Asian receptionist of indeterminate gender sat in a high swivel chair, staring intently at something on the desk in front of him/her. It had petroleum black hair that was sculpted into a sharkfin crest. It sat atop the teenager's narrow skull like a helmet. dark eye makeup and overuse of skin bleach made the kid look cancerous. The androgynous guard looked up as soon as Jessica had spotted him/her and spun the chair around the long way to face her. "Stay right there!" The secretary flowed out of the chair and drifted towards her, covering the ground between them with the liquid, deceptive speed of a seriously augmented razorpunk. "What you want?" The kid's accent was heavy and coarse, dominated by hard consonants spit into Jessica's face. "I ah, have an appointment with..." The young punk guard cut her off with a blink and a wave. "Visual ID does not match. I ask again, what do you want?" Jessica squinted a little. She could barely make out the projection of the HUD built into the punk's eyes, scrolling through what must be a list of appointments and photo images at incredible speeds. "Respond or I will, and you not gonna like it." Jessica looked down at the guard's hands. They were twitching. "Um, here, I got this." As quickly as she could, she pushed the note into his/her face. "Told me to come up here ASAP." She blinked and the guard was reading the note. It went over it once, twice, three times before a sharp burning sensation in her hand told Jessica that she was bleeding. A thin line of blood glistened on the edge of the sheet. Brows furrowed, she stuck the webbing between her thumb and forefinger in her mouth. "Ow, watch it, asshole!" Warm, wet salt covered her tongue. Blood ran down her wrist and stained the cuff of her white man's button down pink. "Shit." "Hang on." There was a pause for about two seconds and the guard stepped aside and the doors slid open. "Okay, go in now. And follow instructions!" Jessica didn't need to be told again. She hurried past the guard as he/she turned and glided back to the reception desk. The doors slid shut behind her, plunging the tiny antechamber into darkness. There was the telltale hiss of an airlock sealing itself and the lights came back on to reveal a stark, white interior with a massive door in front of her and the double doors sealed shut behind her. A small control console rested in the center of the room, dark and silent. "Approach the pedestal in the center of the chamber for clean room preparation." The voice, like all other automated voices in the Artemis complex was vaguely female, unaccented, and generally lifeless. The kind of tone that suggested in humans total boredom or serious psychosis. She hurried to the podium and stood in the two footprints set into the floor. The console lit up. "Please remove your shoes and place them in the designated location." A drawer popped out of the front her and lit up. Jessica stepped out of her synthleather retro-army boots and stuffed them into the box. It slid shut and the computer droned on. "Place your hands on the sphere in the center of the control panel and prepare for sanitization process." Jessica took her hand out of her mouth and touched the cold metal sphere with her palms. "Not even going to say this won't hurt a bit, huh?" Her voice was flat. The sound hit the walls of the chamber and didn't rebound. Not even a little. "Santization process commencing. Close your eyes and do not move." She complied. Abruptly, the insides of her eyelids turned bright red pulsed hot before returning to dark and cool. A tingling sensation started at her forehead and traced the contours of her face, tickling its way down her body until it had covered every centimeter of her person. She shivered as chills ran up her spine. "Dermal compromise detected. Beginning sealing process. The sphere her hands were placed on hummed, sending vibrations up her arms. Somewhere Jessica heard the faint charge of a capacitor over the bass staccato pounding of her own heart and she suddenly found that she wanted to get out of here and get as far away from Bioengineering as possible. Before she could move, the charge filled and there was a pulse of energy. There was the faintest touch of something hot and then the cloying scent of seared skin assaulted her nostrils. She almost cried out but her voice caught in her throat. She tore her hands away from the sphere, took one step back from the podium and tripped over something in the dark, landing hard on the cold floor. She opened her eyes, but it was still black. The capacitor was silent. There was no sound at all in the room except for her own heavy, rapid breathing and her drumming heart. She swallowed the lump in her throat and fumbled around in the dark on her hands and knees. Aside from the podium, the room was featureless to the touch. Overhead, an air conditioner kicked in, blowing cold, moistureless air down on top of her and rapidly driving the temperature down to uncomfortable. Jessica started to shiver. She felt along the circular wall. On the inside, it was seamless, smooth, and uniform. The air conditioner kicked up, raising gooseflesh under her clothes and making her teeth chatter. Freezing and unable to find any kind of exit, she had no choice except to sit still, draw her knees up to her chest, and wait. She sat there for a little while, counting her breaths. She couldn't see her exhalations from total darkness, but she knew it had to be getting close to ten degrees in the room. At least the ferroplast insulated walls wasn't losing heat fast. Finally, the lights did come back on and the air conditioner's arctic howl died down and ceased altogether. Indicator lights in the wall directly in front of the podium came on and a round doorway irised open. Rubbing her eyes to get used to the light again, Jessica didn't notice that she was no longer alone. The elfin woman rubbed her arms as she entered the room, walking silently on her soft black flats. "You must be Ms. Bradley." Jessica started, rising fast to her feet. "I'm glad you got my note. I hope the sanitization process didn't disturb you too much." She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall as a small smile dimpled her smooth, olive tan cheeks. "Some people find it a little disturbing the first time they go through it." Jessica didn't respond for a moment while she stepped back into her boots. "Actually, it did bother me a little." She looked the other woman up and down. High cheekbones and tanned, olive skin framed by straight sable hair drawn back in a neat ponytail identified her as Asian, Chinese by the delicate angle of her almond shaped eyes, though she looked back at Jessica through green eyes the same shade as the dark jade circle that hung from a silver chain around her neck. She was wearing a simple, black pullover blouse tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans and a long white lab coat. "Um, I'm Jessica Bradley." She approached the woman slowly and extended a hand. Jessica's 1.7 meter height hardly made her a giant, but the woman's hand nearly disappeared in hers and she barely reached her chin. The Chinese woman smiled up at her and shook her hand. Those bright green irises and abyssal pupils scanned her face with the meticulous precision of bionic augmentation. She smiled and nodded. "Glad to meet you. I'm Dr. Chiang." As Jessica opened her mouth to say something, she smiled and waved her off. "But call me Marissa. I take it that you got my note." She turned and walked back down the short corridor, gesturing for Jessica to follow. "I was hoping it would get there. I had to get one of my interns to carry it himself." Jessica nodded. The automated mail system was designed to handle chips and discs, not papers. As Jessica stepped through the doorway, the interlocking panels spiraled shut again, sealing off the antechamber with such speed that she jumped forward a meter or so in surprise. Marissa looked over her shoulder. "Oh yeah, they close quick around here." She put on a face mask and handed one to Jessica. "We work in a sterile environment in the lab. Externally you're clean, but you need to wear this to avoid contaminating anything in the lab." Jessica nodded and put it on. Marissa swiped her ID card through a reader at the end of the hall and the double doors slid open. Marissa stepped through, turned, and spread her arms panoramic to indicate the white on white vista behind her. "Welcome to Bioengineering." Still shivering, Jessica stepped through the door. She looked around at the completely white room and its occupants and felt very out of place. In contrast to her solid black T-shirt and gray man's buttondown, everyone else had a lab coat on. The Bioengineering lab looked more like a super computer center than anything else. The far wall was dominated by two meter high banks of the latest Cray supercomputers, and individual terminals were spaced in neat rows throughout the entire facility. Each terminal consisted of a small desk with a monitor and an older model, chair style, visor and gloves virtual reality rig. The people working at the terminals all looked either like college interns or kids in a video arcade, except for the respiratory filters over their faces. All of them had the same pallid, cyber-slave faces that Jessica was entirely too familiar with from her own time down in the dungeons of tech support. It all looked wrong. Marissa must have noticed the arched eyebrows, open mouthed gawk that had settled on her face. She stopped and crossed her arms, favoring her with a plainly uncomprehending look. "Is something wrong, Ms. Bradley?" "Huh?" Jessica shook her head to clear the daze and blinked a couple times as if to make sure she was still in the same place. "Yeah. I thought this was a bio lab. Where's the bio? It looks like where I work but I get a nicer chair to sit in. What the hell is all this?" The idea that the bioengineering people had put her through that flash freeze sensory deprivation hell for the health of a computer suddenly formed in her mind. She found the idea very, very distressing. As her body warmed back up so did her temper. She swept her arm wide, covering the lab with her gesture. "What's wrong? You locked me in that fucking... thing and you can't tell what the hell is wrong?" Jessica could feel her blood moving again. She clenched her fists and glared at the tiny scientist. "What do you want from me? Cut the crap and make your pitch. And where the hell is the lab? This is supposed to be a lab, isn't it? What's with all the terminals?" The doctor either didn't notice her outburst or ignored it. Either way, the flat refusal to acknowledge Jessica's anger cooled it off as fast as the air conditioner. Marissa looked around the lab and laughed a little. "Oh! You mean all this." She smiled, the kind of nice, patronizing look usually reserved for school kids on field trips. "This is where we do the bulk of our experimentation. Virtual reality is safer, faster, and cheaper than actual scientific trial and error, so we do as much of the mundane things as we can in the cybernet." She slowly slipped into a high school teacher voice as she continued. "Operations like DNA sequencing, gene splicing, modeling, and other everyday procedures work best on a computer. That way the bulk of our resources can go into the actual cutting edge experimentation." Marissa walked over to a door "1" in the far wall on the left end of the computer bank and opened it, waving Jessica over. "But to answer your question, no, you were not brought here for this. The computer's work is done in this project. What we need you for is much more hands on." Marissa swung the door inwards. Jessica peered over Marissa's shoulder as fluorescent lights came on and made the room visible. There were no computer stations here, just a simple desk terminal with a trideo projector. It looked like a doctor's office. Unmarked cabinets ringed the three meter high ceiling while a gopher robot patrolled its track around them, ready to bring back a requested item if requested by the computer's operator. The terminal was standing on one side of the small room, within easy access of the plain enameled examination table in the center of the room. Directly opposite the door was a huge mirror set into the wall. Jessica stared at her reflection in the glass. Tall, generically pretty, lazily dressed in worn jeans and a man's shirt over hers, and confused look on her face. Marissa entered first and then held the door open for Jessica to enter. "This is where you and I will be spending most of the time during this study." Before she could say more, Jessica cut her off with a raised hand and a wave. "Wait a minute, Doctor. I never agreed to anything." Jessica entered the room, but stopped just inside the doorway. "You still haven't told me anything." The doctor paused and cocked her head slightly, and shrugged. It was creepy. "I'm not doing anything more until you tell me what you want, why me, and what I'm going to get out of this besides a paid vacation I'm not supposed to have." She crossed her arms and glared. Marissa nodded and sat down on the table. She met Jessica's gaze evenly, focusing her eyes past her, breaking her stare. "You're right, of course. I do owe you a couple explanations, don't I?" Jessica didn't respond. "Let's see. I think it'll be easier if I answer those backwards." Marissa reached into a pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a small datapad. "Hmmm. Your records show that you have a degree in computer security, and that you graduated with top honors." Jess nodded. "So?" "You seem rather overqualified for your current position as an ISS technician to me." Marissa started down Jessica's old college resume. "Academic honors, recognition by the Newark, New Jersey police department for tracking a chipped out datathief, a pile of recommendations by nationally known professors." She looked up from her list and pointed the pad at Jessica. "Your talents are being wasted, Ms. Bradley." She pressed a couple keys and returned to her reading. "For your participation in this project, I am prepared to offer you a new position in the Bioengineering department as a network security specialist. You would gain level 5 access to systems resources and necessary cybernetic implants for your job, including an improved datajack and internal headware to assist you in the operation of your new cyberdeck. The job also comes with a competitive, negotiable raise in salary to match the nature of your new responsibilities. If you wish, you can also move into an apartment in the Arcology itself with access to a variety of the services that Artemis provides. And finally, you'll get a four week vacation every year with travel assistance if you go during the off season." Marissa set the pad down on the table and looked up, looking straight into Jessica's eyes. "Or you can go back down to the twenty first floor and pretend that none of this ever happened." Marissa's voice grew quiet and her eyes narrowed. Continuing mundanity or the responsibilities and challenges you know you're cut out for. Well, Ms. Bradley, it's your call." Jessica leaned against the doorframe and swallowed the tension balling in her throat. Despite the chill in the room, her face was flushed and sweating. She was being offered her dream job. For her part, Dr. Chiang simply stood still, most of her weight shifted onto her left foot, with the datapad in the same hand propped up on her hip. The doctor met her gaze and nodded slowly and Jessica felt overcome with the urge to lower her gaze. She was right, and Jessica knew it. What she said would decide the course of her future. This woman could make or break her career, giving her the job she deserved and dreamed of, or sending her back to the same old pointless life she had been living until this point. She was deciding her destiny, and it was an agonizing choice. Chiang must have noticed her discomfort because she drew in her breath and continued on in the same businesslike tone she had used. "Perhaps I should tell you what will be required of you if you choose to accept my offer to assist me and my colleague on this project?" Jessica closed her eyes and berated herself silently. That offer was so good she had forgotten to consider the price in her excitement and her desire to be free of tech support forever. "Yes, I think I'd like to know that." She was talking to the floor and her voice was hardly more than a whisper. She felt like a fool. How had this gotten so out of hand? Jessica shook her head and closed her eyes. If Dr. Chiang made a reasonable request, she'd take the offer. It was simply too good to refuse. Her dreams, she decided, were worth whatever Bioengineering decided to do. It was just a matter of knowing what she had to do. Dr. Chiang was more than willing to fill in the details. "Well, it's very simple. You have to have a child." She straightened her posture and set the datapad down, folding her arms. "Please, Ms. Bradley. Close your mouth. You've misunderstood nothing. All you must do in this project is act as a surrogate mother to an embryo that we have been working with recently. I will personally see to it that your medical needs are taken care of by project affiliated professionals, and I guarantee your health. What do you say?" Jessica stood and gaped, totally stunned. Dr. Chiang was talking as if becoming pregnant was like eating a new kind of food every day. "You want me to have a baby? You dragged me all the way up here for something as simple as that? Why not just grow it in a tank?" Of the little biology she had been taught, Jessica remembered that the cloning of human tissue for organ transplants was done in a large vat of life supporting brown stuff at incredibly high cost. Dr. Chaing had an answer for that, too. "Frankly the problem with that is we don't know how well this particular embryo will develop in vitro, and it costs and incredible amount to make just one cell, let alone a million backups. Operations handed down that decision and forced us into this position." An annoyed look clouded her face and she brushed some loose hair away from her eyes. "So, Ms. Bradley, what will it be?" Jessica just stood there and gawked. Part of her was offended and hurt by such a request. That anyone could make such an offer to her, as if the corporation could just... just rent her body for nine months and then pay her of with a new job and some fancy high grade cyberware. The very idea made her want to puke. On the other hand, she was forced to admit that she was tempted by the deal. Here she was, just wasting her time and talent in her dead end job fixing dumb terminals for the technocrats up-tower. She had no connections and no way out. That was how she got stuck down in ISS in the first place. If she didn't get out soon, she'd be stuck there for good. And after all, what was nine months in exchange for the rest of her future, anyway? She looked up at the doctor and got no help from there. Marissa seemed content to sit there and wait for Jessica to make a decision one way or the other. After a couple minutes of strained silence, Jessica had almost made up her mind... but not quite. She took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm interested. One last question: why me?" She was stalling for time, and the quirky, one sided smile on Marissa's face suggested that the doctor knew it. "To be honest, Ms. Bradley, because you are anonymous. We found you by searching through your medical records. Your tissue matches the type we need for minimal chance of rejection. And well, because you have no family to speak of. I admit there are some minor risks to your health that are normally associated with a first time pregnancy, and all the other prospective candidates for this experiment have husbands, children, and relatives nearby. You, on the other hand, are alone." Marissa either didn't notice that Jessica's fists were clenched and that she was biting into her bottom lip or didn't care. "And finally, because you have the most to gain by accepting our offer and the least to lose. I think that is self explanatory. So what will it be?" Jessica couldn't look the doctor in the eye. She stared down at her feet and then shut her eyes as sweat started to trickle down her forehead. Once again, Chiang was right. If anything happened to her, nobody would ever know. And if she guessed right, none of this was official. She knew she should walk out now and never come up to Bioengineering again. That would be the right thing to do... but the offer was too tempting. Nine months for the rest of her life. She could handle it, no problem. She'd take the embryo, carry it to term, and everything, and then she'd get her implants and her new job and be done with the whole thing. She could pull it off, and she'd finally get what she busted her ass to get through college for. She had finally convinced herself, and before she could change her mind again, she took a deep breath, and looked Marissa straight in the eye. "Fine, I'm in. Deal's a deal, right?" She extended her hand. Her voice sounded distant, muted by the roar of her pounding pulse. Marissa shook her hand. "Yes. Deal's a deal." She handed the datapad to her. "Now then, there are only a couple things I need you to fill out to complete your medical history and create the forms to get you your maternity leave and we will be ready to begin." As Jessica started to update the information on the pad, Marissa smiled, appraising her. She could feel the doctor's eyes scanning her body in a withdrawn, businesslike manner, nodding as if she were inspecting a piece of sculpture. As Jessica left Bioengineering in a daze she felt tired and confused. Her mind told her she should be happy, happy that she had escaped the mire she had been stuck in. Happy that she would have the chance to help in some groundbreaking scientific discovery that she didn't even know what. Happy that she'd soon be living in a much nicer apartment inside the arcology rather than the ancient box in the disintegrating, street level warren downtown. Happy for any number of reasons. And yet, for some reason, she wasn't. Chapter 2: "Well, honeybun, if you want my opinion, it's because somewhere in there you feel like a whore." Eiji leaned across the bar and rested his elbows on the matte black polymer. His hands bowed at the wrist, pointing two lacquered fingernails at her chest. He had to shout to make his usually gentle, lilting voice heard over the chest pounding synthesized dance tracks that kept the customers gyrating on the floor below. Jessica glared at him, then lowered her eyes, staring at his reflection in whatever it was he had given her to drink. The proprietor of Bishonen's Night Club was a petite little queer with short purple hair that framed a face made up somewhere between a kabuki and a harlequin. His face was covered by a base coat of white, with silvery glitter accenting his high cheekbones. Black shadows framed his eyes, crafting a mournful look accented by a pair of lavender teardrops. He reached towards her and patted her cheek. The sleeves of his silver and blue kimono shimmered in the strobe lights illuminating the dance floor. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." She rolled eyes and forced herself to laugh. "It's all right, Eiji. You're right. I feel like a whore. But it's different, isn't it? I mean, they need to do this to make their experiment work. It had to be done." Jessica took a sip of the drink Eiji had mixed. It was teal, carbonated, and it glowed in the dark from the blacklights set into the ceiling. She put the small fishbowl to her lips. Eiji's concoction was syrupy and it tasted like vodka and toothpaste, but just one sip brought a flush to her cheeks. She pursed her lips and drew in a long breath, letting the cold swirl in her nostrils. She was rationalizing her decision, and she could tell Eiji knew it when he shook his head and waggled a finger at her. "Well, someone would have done it anyway. Why not me?" Two college guys that had been slam dancing with each other staggered up to the bar, leaning on each other for support. They climbed onto the stools, holding on to keep from falling off. Eiji grinned at her and winked before gliding over to serve his customers. "I don't know, my friend. Why not?" Jessica watched him for awhile, chatting playfully with the two kids and teasing them. The couple looked into each other's eyes and kissed as Eiji slid them both their drinks. Glass in hand, Jessica spun around and stared down at the packed dance floor. Bishonen's was about as gay as a club could get, but Eiji and his boyfriend Shinji had the best drinks in the Village and a world class dance party so anyone with an open mind dropped in at least occasionally. She scanned the place over the rim of her glass. The familiar dance floor was set a little lower than the rest of the place, with huge speakers at each corner of the square arena. Blacklights were interspersed with regular fluorescent ones, turning the dance floor into a psychedelic swirl of color. An industrial air conditioning system poured frigid air into the building that quickly settled over the club and mingled with the heat of so many people in close proximity and made the place actually comfortable. Clear, colorful streamers danced in the indoor gale, scattering colored starbursts everywhere when the strobe lights went off. Up on the stage was an old fashioned 2D screen playing some classic Japanimation from the late 20th century. Two people dressed up in glow in the dark kabuki garb walked up to the bar and sat down where the college guys had just left. Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica noticed them staring at her. She did look seriously out of place. A single woman in a gay bar. Go figure. The only reason she was here is because Eiji had been a friend since he came from Japan to go to college. They sat around for a minute or two, and then left. Suddenly Eiji pranced up to her and leaned against the bar. "Hey, don't be so upset, Jessie. You did it for your own good, and that's all you need to care about." He smiled. Up close, even his teeth had glitter on them. "And besides, you'll be on vacation for nine months. How do you go wrong?" He spun away from the bar and bowed to her with the grace of an acrobat. "Come on, let's dance. It'll be good for you." She smiled and tipped her glass back, downing the rest of her drink. "Sure, why the hell not?" Whatever it was she had just swallowed hit hard and fast. The liquor warmed her belly and made the rest of her feel minty. Eiji's charm was infectious. If he was having a good time, soon everyone else would be too. Jessica smiled and let him lead her by the hand towards not the dance floor, but the stage. She had tried to date him when they had met as freshmen. He was bright, witty, and so cute. She had found out the hard way what his type really was, but neither he nor the high school kid he had been engaged with at the time had been too badly offended when she accidentally walked into his apartment without knocking. Surprised, certainly, but not angry. Eiji led her to the center of the stage and spun her into his arms as a spotlight illuminated them and the music faded out for the next track. As the music started, Eiji leaned close and winked. "Check out Shinji. He's so jealous!" Surrounded by a pool of bright white light, his body glitter was diamond fire. He shifted forward slightly. This close, the aroma of triple distilled sake and lilac perfume mingled with Eiji's own subtle, friendly scent and his breath tickled as he whispered into her ear. "Just remember to call me when the baby comes." * It was raining when the government helicopter, running dark in whisper mode, set down on the helipad. Jenner waited inside the glass doors and adjusted the inhaler built into his respirator, taking a deep breath as the fine steroid mist opened his protesting lungs. The door opened and a dark silhouette stepped down onto the ferrocrete, holding a large, old fashioned umbrella for the smaller shape that emerged. This far out in the Blue Ridges of North Carolina, far away from the Charlotte-Atlanta megasprawl, the rain actually came down clean, protected by distance and prevailing wind currents from the carcinogenic shower that pelted the cityscape regularly. The two men hurried towards covered walkway that led from the helipad to the old fashioned Artemis owned lodge where the company entertained very important guests. Jenner met them at the door of the two story Tudor style wood and stucco house, though he still spoke through his respirator. He addressed the smaller of the two men, a balding government type in a generic grey long coat that matched his receding coiffure. "Let me guess. Mr. Johnson, right?" The man nodded with a smirk and shook the proffered hand. "Good enough, Dr. Jenner." it was a generic appellation these days. A pseudonym assumed whenever one was conducting business with people who didn't need to know your name. It was usually used when dealing with inferiors, and Jenner had every right to be offended by Johnson's lack of professional courtesy, but G-men were G-men and Matt knew enough not to pry into his client's identity. The govern The human mountain standing behind him and to the right was reason enough to let Johnson's desire for anonymity slide. He looked towards the inviting glow of the brightly lit lodge and a wistful look shadowed the wan, close shaven face. "Shall we discuss things in a nicer place, Doctor? Somewhere better for your asthma, perhaps?" Jenner nodded and stepped back through the mahogany paneled front foor with its old fashioned, beveled armored glass window. Mr. Johnson's bodyguard followed quickly afterwards, silently scanning the white marble tiled foyer. He swept the muzzle of the sub machinegun that had materialized from his coat from the small lounge, cozy den to the left, to the large formal dining room on the right. Only when he was certain that there were no traps, lurking assassins, or other concealed threats did the unspeaking titan beckon for his employer. Matt waited for his client to enter before shutting the door and locking the dead bolt. "Mr. Johnson, if you'll accompany me into my office we can go over what I have to report regarding the project." Johnson sloughed off his coat and hung it on a solid brass rack beside the door. "Certainly. Let's go at once." Jenner nodded and led the men up the mint plush carpeted stairs and into the large room that served him as an office. The plush carpet gave way to a warm hardwood floor dominated by a vast desk which supported several computer displays and interfaces. Antique wooden bookshelves along the soft beige walls housed rows of data discs, records of all the business that had been done in the room since the house had been purchased by Artemis in 2015. A small bar was wedged in the corner between the left and rear walls, and the hum of the powerful air filter provided a noticeable background din. Jenner sat down behind the desk. The large, bulletproof glass window behind him provided a dark and stormy backdrop to the evening's proceedings. He gestured to Johnson, who sat down in one of the armchairs opposite him. Johnson's giant turned into a statue near the door. "Now then, sir, shall we discuss what you came here after?" Johnson nodded. "Certainly, doctor. The speech you gave in Charlotte was very impressive. Are you sure that the board of operations doesn't know exactly what kind of project you're doing?" A briefly furrowed brow and the slight tensing of his normally slack jaw muscles belied the mask of calm civility that he wore. "After all, I would hate to have to terminate all record of working with you if it was discovered that your experiment stood on very tenuous legal grounds regarding the full body cloning ban of 2028." Johnson's eyes scanned the room for somewhere to look other than Jenner's eyes. He finally fixed on the wet bar. Jenner didn't respond immediately. He smiled a little and watched Johnson avoid his gaze. Jenner sat still for a moment and then rose to his feet. He walked over to the bar with his back to the room. "Sorry, Johnson. Care for a drink? Brandy, maybe?" He kept his voice even and bit down on his tongue. His knuckles were white as he poured himself a drink. "Bourbon and water, please. With ice." Matt took a deep breath. That government imp dared to threaten his project because of some gray wording in an obsolete statute that had been passed by a bunch of bleeding heart paranoiacs years ago when the kind of techniques he was using now didn't even exist. He poured out Johnson's drink and took the mingled, sweet, acrid scents of the liquor deep into his lungs. It calmed him down a little. He turned around with a warm smile and set Johnson's glass down in front of him before returning to his seat. "Don't worry about the board, Mr. Johnson. They know what I have told them, and nothing more. The only person besides you and myself who knows that the subject is over 90 percent human is my assistant Marissa, and even she doesn't know exactly how much of the original code came from a human." Matt kept his eyes on Johnson, watching him closely over the rim of his glass as he sipped the fiery currant liquor. He savored the warmth and let it spread slowly down his throat and throughout his body as he swallowed and settled back in the leather covered executive throne. "That does bring up one small question my superiors had, Doctor." Johnson took a long sip of his drink and set the glass down on the desk. "If I may be so bold as to ask... why dogs? I mean, isn't there another, more suitable animal you could have selected?" Johnson paged through the hard copy report Jenner had given him before and set them now. "They wonder if you can't come up with something bigger, or perhaps stronger?" Jenner smiled and leaned his chair back, crossing his legs and swirling the brandy around in the crystal snifter. That DOD would ask a question like that was not at all surprising. Then again, that was why the United States of America turned to him. He was the best, and they knew it. "Well, what would they prefer? Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my?" He shook his head and favored Johnson with a smirk and propped his feet up on the desk. Johnson sat up straighter and blinked rapidly. Jenner almost didn't hear the man's teeth grinding over the hum of the air cleaner. Matt locked gazes with him for a couple seconds and Mr. Johnson's indignation deflated as he quickly found the framed plaque that hung above the bar bearing Jenner's 2025 Nobel Prize for his work on the Human Genome Project remarkably interesting. To him, it looked as if the man was trying to read the text from across the room. Jenner leaned across the desk. He set the brandy snifter down and folded his hands. "Mr. Johnson? I asked you a question." "Actually, Doctor... that's not too far from the truth, if you must know." Matt nodded. "Simple. Of all the creatures in the animal kingdom, the dog has the longest and most successful history of cooperation with humans. They're natural predators... the most powerful ever to be domesticated, highly social, and much, much tougher than you or I." He paused for a minute, watching Johnson's face for signs of recognition. Eventually, the man nodded slowly. It was possible that he understood the simplified terms Jenner was using, but if not, he could always be buried in jargon. "More important than all of that, however, is the fact that they recognize humans as their superiors and have, in the past, readily laid down their lives for their percieved pack leaders." "I see. Go on." Jenner could tell by the slow blink of Johnson's eyes and the rigid tension in his neck that the man had absolutely no clue if he was being lied to or not, but what he was hearing certainly sounded good. He suppressed the urge to laugh by picking up his drink and draining the glass. It blasted his sinuses clear and burned its way down his throat. He affected a grimace and coughed to conceal his mirth from the clueless suit. "Try and remember high school biology, Mr. Johnson. The dog is a perfect soldier. History has done most of the engineering for me. Our kind has bred theirs to be loyal to the death and fiercely protective of their human packmates. Take those ingrained behaviors, put them in a humanoid body with the learning capacity equal to that of any human solder and the physical strength, endurance, and sensory acuity to rival any of the self styled cyberknight vigilantes that wander the streets. Throw in a feeling of willing subservience and loyalty reinforced by thousands of yeares of breeding." He set the glass down and folded his hands behind his head, letting Johnson digest his words. The man was obviously having a great deal of trouble keeping up, but Matt thought the words were small enough that he should understand enough to take a favorable report back to his bosses in Washington. "And, Mr. Johnson, once a breeding population has been set up, produce them by natural birth for a fraction of the cost of creating an augmented trooper in comparable time." It was the coup de grace. The last sentence spoken in Johnson's language of costs, gains, and profit margins did what all his promises had failed to do: win the man over completely. Matt let himself smile, making sure not to let his feature sink into the condescending smirk that he was so accustomed to wearing. He remained still, watching Johnson mull over the information. Finally, the man stood, extending a clammy hand across the desk. "Thank you, Dr. Jenner. I think we have established excellent grounds for future discussion, don't you?" Matt rose, took Johnson's hand and pumped it vigorously. Johnson laughed a forced, nasal cackle and pulled his hand away quickly, covering it with his coat. "Yes, Mr. Johnson, I think we have." He remained standing until Mr. Johnson and his bodyguard had left the office. The staff would show them to the door. * Eiji yawned and flopped down on the couch, sinking into the supple real leather covering. Jessica looked over her shoulder at him and laughed before pitching the last of the boxes into the trash chute. "Oh come on, you wimp. I don't have that much stuff." He had come over to the Arcology that morning to help her move into her new apartment and the two of them had been there for hours, mostly standing around trying to figure out how to get Jessica's new genuine leather couch exactly where it looked right. She had bought it cheap on the advance from her first paycheck. The first of nine months paid maternity leave. Unfortunately, the salmon monstrosity didn't quite fit in the the living room or either of the two bedrooms in the small, mid-level set of rooms just above cloud level. Eiji had warned her that it was too big for her new place, and the color clashed with the soft, deep cocoa carpeting. He was right, of course, but by the time Jessica was willing to admit it, Eiji had already lugged the thing most of the way towards the apartment and now there was no way he was going to let her call the movers to take the couch back to the store. "Oh no... you dragged my butt out here to get this couch and you are going to get it!" Eventually they settled on putting it in the dining room, where it dominated a good portion of the back wall. Eiji pointed out that she didn't have a table to put in there anyway, and besides, that's where the window was. The couch wound up sitting across from the window, flanked on either side by the charcoal lacquered end tables she had bought to go with it. The overall effect was something like a pink topped cake, but even Eiji couldn't deny that it was a comfortable thing. "Thanks, Eiji." Jessica leaned against the plain beige wall and looked out the window. The sky, except for the occasional wisp of grayish smog that drifted up from the cloud layer, was an undiluted blue. When she had first seen the place a week ago, she had been sorely tempted to put her bed there. "I wish my parents could see this place. It'd blow their minds." Jessica's parents were corporate wage slaves working in the corporate machine of Carlyle Heavy Industries, a Pittsburgh based rival of Artemis. They had both lost their lives when an Artemis takeover of a production facility in Philadelphia turned bloody. She had gone to school on what was left her in their will, hoping to escape the kind of life that had gotten her parents killed. It had taken her three years and some third party intervention, but she had, at last, done it. Eiji didn't seem to agree with her. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, stretching out on his back. In contrast to the theatrical stuff he wore to work, Eiji looked much more subdued in his black BDU's, tight black t-shirt, and high boots. "Only if you didn't tell them how you got the job, hon." He still didn't like the way she had come into her new position, and he constantly reminded her of his displeasure. Jessica rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Eiji, will you just come off it? Even if I wanted to quit, which I don't, I couldn't. I signed on for the whole thing, so will you just stop it?" She flounced down on the couch on the other end from him. "Besides, what's nine months compared to the rest of my life?" "Sometimes, Jessie, I think you just keep saying that to convince yourself of that." Eiji rolled off the couch to his feet and looked in the green framed rectangular mirror, checking his eyeliner. "Well, I have a bar to open Jessie. Good luck." Eiji nodded shortly in her direction and glided out the front door. Jessica clenched her fists at her sides and kicked her boots off. They bounced off the heavy armored glass window and slumped to the floor. "You... you bitch!" She practically spat out the words. Ever since she had known him, Eiji had been her best friend. After awhile, she found herself able to tell him things that most women reserved for their girlfriends. That drew a bitter chuckle. Eiji wore more makeup than she did at times. What he had first said to her when she told him still rang in her mind. "Somewhere... you feel like a whore." She tried out the words, and they hurt. But there wasn't any turning back now. She had committed. Like a whore. Chapter 3: She was in the elevator, on the way home, when it happened. The first contraction broke her water and twisted every muscle in her body all at once. Her knees buckled as her stomach tried to turn itself inside out. Jessica stumbled into the corner of the elevator car and gasped. Marissa had warned her continuously that this wasn't going to be an easy pregnancy, but nothing had prepared her for this. A spine wrenching spasm that forced a shuddering moan from her throat. Her mouth went dry as she flooded her clothes and the floor with warm amniotic fluid. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Everything was happening so quickly. Another contraction siezed her, wrenching her body in different directions. Jessica's breath rushed from her lungs with a harsh croak. She reached out and grabbed hold of the brass rails to keep her footing. Jessica fumbled for her bag. Marissa had given her a special pager to use when she went into labor. She found the palm sized white egg and depressed the signal button. Marissa sounded as if she had been eating. She was talking with her mouth full. "What? Jessica, is that you?" "It's time..." A scream cut her off. Her spine felt like it wanted to tear free of her back. Her knees buckled, and sweat streamed into her eyes. "Oh my God, where are you?" Jessica could hear things being dropped and shoved around rapidly. "Elevator 12. I was heading back to my place." "Can you reach the controls?" The elevator began to slow as it approached Jessica's floor. Holding the brass handrail, she stumbled over to the panel. "Yeah." "Cancel whatever your call is and send it up to me. I'll meet you." She did as told and sent the elevator up to the 400th floor. As the elevator sped up again, she lost her footing on the slick floor and collapsed heavily. Marissa was waiting in front of the elevator with a medical team and a stretcher. As soon as the elevator doors were open, she was inside. Marissa knelt beside her and slipped a mask over her face. "Keep calm and breathe deeply, Jessica." She nodded and tried to say something, but Marissa held a finger to her lips. "Don't talk now. We're just going to get you on the stretcher and take you to the infirmary." Everything was starting to get fuzzy. She lost track of what Marissa was saying as the doctor stood and started giving orders. She was vaguely aware that she was being eased onto something. She felt a contraction like it was a bad simsense rig. The sensation was distant, not real, as though she were experiencing somebody else's recorded sensations. At least the stretcher had a soft mattress and a warm blanket. She was getting so tired. She sighed; the air coming through the mask was crisp and it smelled like wine. Jessica yawned, folded her hands across her ample midsection, and drifted off as the life inside her stirring to get out. * When the anesthetic wore off, Jessica's eyes rolled open. Her hair was stiff and plastered to her face and neck by sweat, and every muscle in her body ached as though she'd just climbed the entire arcology by the stairs. The sharp, aluminum foil taste of drugs stung the back of her tongue and as feeling returned, the cold throb of an IV drip in her left forearm made her wince. She pushed the sweaty mat away from her with her free hand and looked around. She was back to normal size. Though it had only been four months instead of nine like she had expected, Jessica was glad she could wear her normal clothes again. No more waddling around looking like the great whales that used to cruise the ocean depths. She stretched, moving her neck from side to side. Her vertebrae, in one position for too long, crackled and popped comfortably. Jessica stretched her arms, and groaned. She felt like she'd been hit by a truck. Taking several slow, deep breaths, she shut her eyes tight until the bright spots disappeared. She was in a hospital room, dimly lit only by a single anemic table lamp. Shadows stretched everywhere, shrouding the different instruments arranged all over the place in black velvet. From the darkness, green and yellow LED lights watched her dispassionately. She was alone. Curious, she lifted the blanket and her hospital gown and peered down at herself. She could see her feet again, and the swelling in her ankles seemed to have subsided. The only remaining sign that she had been pregnant until recently was a tiny brown scar where the C-section incision had been sealed shut with synthetic skin. She smiled. "Huh. Not even a stretch mark." Very cool. Slowly, she tried sitting up. Aside from a sharp pull from the needle in her arm, everything was okay. There were no windows in the room, and no clock. She wondered what time it was. Jessica reached over to the white enameled table next to the bed and fumbled around until she hit the intercom switch. It didn't take very long at all for the door to open. Marissa was there, along with an older man. Both of them were wearing green scrub suits. At almost two meters tall, he dwarfed the other doctor. He had sharp, darting blue eyes and long fingers that were white with the powder from surgical gloves. The man made eye contact with her and smiled, showing off his perfect, custom modified teeth. "Hello, Jessica. Feeling all right?" His voice was light, kind of melodic, but there was a slight undertone of gravity to it... as though he were worried. Jessica returned his smile as the he pulled up chairs for himself and Marissa. "Yes. I'm a little sore, but I'm all right. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be." Though she had been pregnant for only four months, it hadn't been an easy time. She had been on drugs to suppress her immune system constantly to make sure there was no chance for rejection, and as a result she hadn't been able to leave the constantly purified arcology atmosphere. It hadn't been at all enjoyable, but she did get to see her new office and experiment with her new cyberware, which had been implanted along with the embryo to take advantage of the drugs. The delivery was a lot easier by comparison. She had been afraid that she would have had to give a natural birth. She smiled wearily. "I'm glad I missed the real hard part." "By the way, I'm Matt Jenner." The man offered Jessica a hand, which she took. "I must say that it's been an absolute pleasure working with you." He smiled again, and his blue eyes sparkled. He raised her hand to his mouth and gently kissed her fingers. "Congratulations. You were a great help to us." Jessica blushed and withdrew her hand. "Um... sure. You're welcome, Doctor, is it?" In the back of her mind, she wondered who he was. They had never met before. Jenner nodded. "That's right." "Um... can I ask you a question?" "Anything. Fire away." Jenner crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. "Can I see the baby? I mean, after all this time, I'd like to see it. I don't even know if it's a boy or a girl." As soon as she spoke, she noticed the doctors' reactions. "Is something wrong?" The color had drained from Marissa's face. Jenner looked anywhere in the room but at her. There were a few seconds of silence until Marissa broke it with an uneasy smile. "Um..." "Jessica, the baby didn't survive. It died an hour after it was born." Jenner took Jessica's hands in his. "You've been asleep for ten hours now." He lowered his eyes, not wanting to look at her. "I'm so sorry. We did all we could, but there were defects we didn't expect." His stellar blue eyes were dull, misted over. The doctor patted her hand. His soft skin was hot and dry to the touch. "Defects? What kind of defects?" She was still groggy. What could he mean? There hadn't been a person born with birth defects inside an arcology in a decade. That kind of thing only happened out in the worst parts of the sprawl where the environmental engineers never went. "I don't understand. What happened?" "Jessica, you've got to understand something." Jenner's voice was soft and soothing, and his hand against her leg was warm. "In experiments, things happen. It isn't your fault, okay?" Jessica didn't know what was still in her body, but she didn't care. Through the warm, soft haze that wrapped itself around her, she found it hard to care about anything at all. "Sure. I guess. When can I go home?" Jenner exchanged a look with his partner. Marissa smoothed out her scrub suit and smiled, though she kept her eyes on Jessica's chart instead of her face. "Well, if you feel up to it, you're ready to go and start work tomorrow. Meet me outside the lab at 9:00 and I'll show you to your office. What do you say?" "Sure. Sounds good to me." Her brain was slowly coming back online, and as it started listening to her body again, Jessica realized she was starving. "Unhook me from this thing?" She raised her arm. It felt like it weighed ten kilograms, but was getting lighter every second. The drugs were getting flushed, and her bladder was starting to make her aware of that. Marissa nodded and carefully removed the IV from her arm. "Well, Jessica, you're free to go. There are some of your regular clothes in the closet." She stood and beckoned Jenner to follow. "See you tomorrow, all right?" Jessica nodded and rubbed at the sore spot on her arm. "Can we make it a lunch thing though? I hurt." As the painkillers faded, the fatigue was setting painfully in. "Sure. Noon then." Marissa waved goodnight and the two doctors left. Jessica laid back and stretched her arms over her head. Relieved of a good portion of excess weight, her spine responded noisily. She sat up and rolled to the floor. The hard tiles were freezing against her bare feet, so she hurried over to the small bathroom. The white tiled closet had a toilet, several towels, and a shower. Jessica reached behind her back, undid the ties on the flimsy hospital gown she was wearing, and made liberal use of all three. * Marissa was waiting near the security desk in her typical white lab coat over a frumpy oversized sweatshirt and a pair of faded blue jeans when Jessica, fresh from a night's sleep and a healthy dose of small, purple pills that she had found in her mailbox, stepped out of the elevator. The doctor's usually perfect makeup was totally absent, giving her face a pallid cast in the artificial light, and there were dark bags under her eyes. Marissa squinted to see her and yawned openly. "I'm sorry. I've been up all night working on the followup stuff for the operation. I don't look so good." She offered Jessica her hand. "Shall we go get some lunch now?" Jessica took Marissa's hand, and instead of shaking it, she hugged the doctor lightly. Marissa startled and let out a hiccup of surprise, but Jessica smiled and let her go. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to let you know I'm sorry for what happened to the baby. I mean, I know how hard you worked on it and everything." It was easy for Jessica to imagine having years of hard work and effort torn apart by simple bad luck. It had happened to her ever since she had graduated from college with no connections, either corporate or government, to land her a job. She remembered her first interview with Artemis. She had been one of twelve hundred applicants to be processed that day. Waiting for hours in a cushionless plastic chair in the middle of a crowd of other hopefuls all vying for the same job she was after. Nobody talked. The only sounds were the drone of the air conditioner, the sharp staccato of dress shoes on hard tile, and the flat computer voice that called out "Next." With nothing on her resume except a single programming internship at a small security firm and beaming letters of recommendation from professors who didn't know her name, she had no hope for anything better than the support technician's position she was offered. She was until five months ago, quite familiar with bad luck. "Tell you what, I know a great place to go for lunch, if you like Japanese. My treat." Marissa gave her a lost look. She kneaded her eyes with her fingertips; they squeaked in their sockets. "Huh? You mean someplace out of the arcology?" "Sure. Why not? The UV's not so bad today, so all you really need's a respirator. Besides, there's someone I want to introduce you to. How about it?" Marissa seemed to think about it for a second or two. Then she straightened and pulled a stimulant autoinjector from her pocket and pressed the dose to her neck. With a shake of her head, color returned to her cheeks and the slump in her posture disappeared. She returned Jessica's smile and nodded. "Sure, why not? I haven't had lunch outside here in quite awhile. Wait a moment while I get my respirator, all right?" "I can't believe you haven't been outside the Arcology in so long." Jessica pulled her car out into the street and started heading for Bishonen's. Her old Ford-Mazda's powerful halogen lights sliced a path through the darkness that existed below the heavy cloud layer that blanketed Manhattan. She looked over at Marissa. The doctor had buckled herself in and was gripping the door handle so tightly her knuckles were white. "Is something wrong? You can take off your respirator. The car's got environmental controls of its own." "I'm sorry." Marissa undid her mask and set it in her lap. "I've lived in the Arcology ever since I came to work with Matt on the project. It has everything in it. I've never felt the need to leave." She drew in a sharp breath as Jessica swerved suddenly, braking hard to avoid a magenta haired teenager in a black long coat on a skateboard and then floored it to escape as the kid drew a pistol and fired off a couple shots in the car's direction. "And there are other reasons too." "I lived out here for the past three years, doctor." Jessica leaned on the horn and drove the big sedan straight down the road, accelerating up to a 100 kilometers an hour and past on the narrow streets. The light turned red up ahead and other cars started crossing the intersection. She pulled to a stop and reached across Marissa's lap for the glove box. The plastic door dropped down to reveal a battered old .45 automatic that she took and set on the dashboard in front of the steering wheel. "So nobody messes with my car." She cocked her head out her side window to indicate a small group of kids that looked between twelve and eighteen. All of them wore black long coats, rigid with ballistic plastic inserts, and an assortment of chains, spikes, knives, and small firearms. They were leaning against a crumbling old concrete wall underneath a sign that read "Nightshades" painted in a dayglow pattern that matched some of their hairdos and eyeing passing cars with hungry looks on their dirty, gaunt faces. None of them had breather masks. One scrawny blond brat saw Marissa staring out the window at them and his black painted lips parted in a leer. He ran his tongue along his upper lip and grabbed himself until Jessica reached onto the dash and tapped the barrel of her gun on the glass. The light turned green and she floored the pedal, tearing away from them as fast as her car could move. "See what I mean?" Marissa was speechless. She just stared at Jessica and blinked with her mouth hanging open. "That really wasn't a bad bunch. They've been there ever since I can remember. By now they recognize my car. I helped them out once when they were all a lot younger. They were running from a couple of older, chrome powered rich boys with hunting rifles looking for some sport." She pointed to the front right corner of her car, which was slightly dented in. "So I ran the bastards over." "What do you mean... sport?" Jessica set the gun back on the dashboard. "I'm surprised you never ran into it, being a doctor and all." She didn't look over at Marissa, concentrating on the road. Up ahead she could see a police roadblock where a SWAT team was being unloaded from a van. She made a sharp left and drove even faster. "It's something a lot of corp babies do when they become angry teenagers. They get a little cyberware, buy a high powered rifle and some other gear, and go out in their cars and shoot at street people for fun. Sometimes the street people shoot back, and sometimes they don't." Jessica drove a few blocks and made a right. As she passed a side street, she looked down it. In the distance, the cops' floodlights illuminated the street and she could see vague, human shaped forms diving for cover. "Those kids wouldn't have had a chance. They like me now, I think. If it'd been anyone else's car you were in, they'd probably have started shooting. They don't like being looked at like that, and you're dressed like a corp refugee." "My God..." Marissa turned and stared out the window. "How can they live like that?" "What other choices do they have?" Jessica made a right, then an immediate left, and pulled up outside their destination. On the outside, Bishonen's was a newer building, built around 2020,when a corporation called Ferrotech Heavy Industries first started mass producing hostile environment rated construction materials to try and get people to build in the heart of the urban sprawls where conventional steel and concrete tended to come apart in the rain after a few decades. It was a plain grey rectangle that dominated a quarter of the block, two stories tall above ground, with no windows and a single pair of heavy airlock doors facing the street. A bright magenta and electric blue neon sign with an androgynously handsome, green haired Japanimated character in a ninja's outfit advertised the club's name and the band of the night. Jessica pulled into the parking lot and reached for her respirator. "Well, here we are. It's got a weird clientele, but the owner's a friend of mine from college and he's got the best teriyaki in the city." Marissa had been watching the parking lot exit as customers left the building and headed back to their cars. "Are you sure it's `weird' that you mean?" Jessica shrugged and put on her breather. "Something wrong with that?" Marissa shook her head. "No... not really." Jessica opened the door. "Come on, doctor Chiang. Let's go in, shall we?" She got out of the car and pulled her long coat about her closely, and watched Marissa put on her mask and step slowly out of the car. Outside the Arcology, in the real city, the doctor looked as uncomfortable and out of place as she herself had when she was curled up against the wall of the decontamination room outside the bioengineering lab. In a way, it was a poetic kind of justice. Marissa Chiang was, so to speak, in her world now. Jessica caught herself and shook her head. How could she be gloating like that? It must have been the drive over. Being in control of a ton of durasteel did that to her. Marissa might have actually been in danger back there when she looked at the Nightshades like they were wild animals. Jessica scolded herself and smiled at the doctor behind her mask, as if Marissa might see her expression. "I hope you're hungry." Marissa shut the door of the car. She still looked a little pale, and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead despite the January chill. Then her stomach rumbled and that got a little chuckle. "Well, I suppose that answers that question right there." She shrugged and gestured towards the door. "This is your show, Ms. Bradley. Please, lead on. I'm starving." * Eiji saw them enter from his usual perch behind the bar on the other side of the vast, presently empty sunken dance floor. He waved vigorously at Jessica and vaulted the bar. His black and purple iridescent bodysuit went through every shade of blue and violet as he glided through the irregular artificial light, fading to a soft charcoal by the time he reached her and wrapped her up in a hug. "Looking good, Jessie!" He reached behind her head and pulled off her breather. Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he spotted Marissa taking off her own respirator. He jumped back a couple paces and put his hands to his heart. "Jessie! Who's your friend?" Jessica sneaked a glance over at the doctor. Marissa was clearly very disturbed. "Eiji, this is Marissa. Marissa, this is my friend I told you about." Eiji smiled at Marissa and jabbed Jessica in the arm. "What? Are you coming out of the closet too? Come on, Jessie, I thought I knew you by now." He laughed his light, musical laugh. "And to think you wanted to date me." The open mouthed gape on Marissa's face was worth the embarrasment of having a dozen or so couples turn around and cheer loudly. Jessica rolled her eyes and shook her head with a sigh. "Me? Yeah, right." Eiji shrugged and batted his long eyelashes. "Oh well. One can hope, I suppose. " He winked at Marissa, then straightened. Clasping his right fist in his open left hand, Eiji bowed to her in traditional fashion. The formal gesture in his outlandish clothes was comical, but the wink and the warm smile made it seem appropriate. "I am honored to meet you." He straightened and offered her a slender, delicately manicured hand. Today, Eiji's fingernails were painted black with gold glitter set in the enamel like a starfield. "Eiji Takeda." "Marissa. Marissa Chiang." She looked apprehensive about taking Eiji's hand and looked to Jessica, as if for advice. Jessica smiled and offered her a thumbs up from behind Eiji's back. "It's nice to meet you, Eiji." She hesitated for a moment, but finally shook hands. Eiji opened his mouth but caught an elbow from Jessica. "Hey, we're hungry here. How about some service?" She rolled her eyes and handed her coat to a waiting assistant. "Besides, you keep this up and Shinji's going to fold you in half." Eiji's significant other happened to be a third degree black belt in jujutsu. She pointed at Marissa's coat and then at the attendant. "And besides, you've been telling me all about this new girl you hired to do your cooking, so I want to see if she's as good as you claim. Besides, I'm starved." Marissa took her coat off and handed it to the attendant, followed by her lab coat. In the years she had known Eiji, Jessica had learned to read his very subtle body language. She could tell when something bothered him even if nobody else could just by the way he moved, and all of a sudden, he was really disturbed. The signs weren't much. Just the way he shifted his weight onto one leg and uncrossed his arms, and the way he looked straight at Marissa's face while he followed the path of her lab coat into the coatroom with the others. Eiji must have noticed she was staring at him, because his expression when he turned around to face her was as rigid as the harlequin masks that adorned the walls. And then, as soon as it had happened, it vanished. Eiji cocked his head and beckoned for the two women to follow as he led them to their seats. "This way, ladies." Eiji led them up an iron spiral staircase to a broad catwalk that looked down on the rest of the club proper. Six meters above the main floor, the entire vast building was easily observable from one of the round tables arranged along the antique looking black railing that snaked around the outer edge of the catwalk. Set along the wall to their right was a bar about a fifth of the size of the neon and synthetic leather monster below. In the dim overhead and track lighting, the real wood grain glowed a dark red. This early in the day, the place was almost empty. Eiji seated them both and left them with datapads with the menu, slipping away as they started to go over their selections. Jessica scrolled down the vastly expanded list that now included long section on sushi with real fish and seaweed. Marissa must have been looking as well. She punched a few buttons and looked up at her with arched eyebrows. Jessica grinned back. Eiji had impressed the good doctor. "Not bad, huh?" "No, certainly not. He must be quite successful to get the stuff. Real fish. And tuna too. I wonder which cloning center it comes from." She returned to her menu, scanning the screen intently. Jessica watched the doctor scroll through like a kid with his mother's credit card looking through a trideo game archive for awhile before picking out some lunch of her own. She ordered crab sushi, some teriyaki chicken, and tea, the only time she ever drank the stuff. As she sent her order down, the screen blanked. She hit the "send" button again, trying to bring the screen back up and looked over at Marissa. The doctor's pad must have been working fine because a tiny pink crescent of tongue had managed to slip between her lips and Marissa's fingers were practically flying over the keys. Jessica looked back down at her own pad and almost dropped it. The menu still wasn't there. The screen, however, was not blank. "Your lunch is on the way. You didn't get this message. Call me here, at ten thirty tonight. You know who this is, Jessie babe." Jessica had time to read the message over twice before it blanked again and was replaced by the normal menu. She looked up at the doctor again. She wasn't there. Marissa had gone over to the bar and ordered something to drink, leaving Jessica alone with the mysterious note. She turned and looked down into the club. Eiji was standing behind the main bar, staring back at her. He pointed at her, then at himself, and then tapped his wrist, indicating a watch. Then he turned to help a pair of businesswomen in suits and power ties who were busily making doe eyes at each other. She looked up at Marissa, who was carrying two blue stemmed wine glasses and a bottle back to the table, and remembered how Eiji had stared at her. It had only been for a couple seconds, but still, that didn't happen unless something really freaked him out. What could possibly have bothered him so much? Jessica didn't have anymore time to think about it. Marissa returned and poured them both wine, "to celebrate her new career," and a waiter showed up shortly after that with their lunches. Jessica watched, eyes wide and mouth open, as the waiter set down three trays of different kinds of sushi, a plate of fried noodles, a bowl of miso soup, and a chicken dish Jessica had never ordered before. Marissa laughed at her incredulous expression. "Hey, this is breakfast and lunch for me." "Do you always eat like this? All that food probably weighs as much as you do!" Marissa shrugged and snatched up a piece of chicken in her chopsticks. She popped it into her mouth and sagged back into her seat sighing. "If it's this good, why not?" She sipped at her wine a little before sitting back up. "Now then, why don't we talk about what we came here for, hmm?" Jessica nodded and the two of them began in earnest. As it turned out, Jessica had been fitted with gear that was at or very close to the top of the line. An extended capacity neural interface jack (though it was still the older plug-in type instead of the expensive neural induction pad) would let the internal math coprocessor and accompanying high performance mnemonic enhancement chips boost her ability to process large amounts of data nearly instantaneously. All three systems would connect with a cyberdeck that wasn't slated to be released on the market for two more years. All told, Jessica's brain had the hardware to make her a match for just about any intruder on the sensitive Artemis databases that she would be responsible for securing. Of course, there would be fringe benefits from the implants. Her capacity for recognizing details had increased tremendously as her memory worked so much faster that any subtle cues of body language, voice, or even smell would yank the relevant bits of information from her brain a hundred times faster than before, her health insurance had been drastically expanded to cover any possible medical problems that the implants might cause. So that was how she had noticed. The instant recall felt so natural, but Jessica was sure it was because of the cyberware in her head. She couldn't remember ever being able to home in on Eiji's nonverbal cues before. Not to that extent, anyway. It had been something that had just happened, without her even thinking about it. Her memory was as close to flawless as was humanly possible now, and the consternation in Eiji's eyes and posture added to the mystery on her menu. But that was something to think about later. Or was it? Jessica found herself listening to Marissa tell her about the corporation's traveling arrangements and her four week vacation each year while she replayed the scene with Eiji over and over in her mind. And she was asking questions, too. "That's terriffic. What kind of resorts does Artemis own? Is the travel by bullet train, low orbit supersonic transport, or conventional aircraft? Are there any provisions in the contract for staying on the leading edge of the technology curve?" The scariest part of all of it was that she was remembering the answers. The corporation owned a variety of vacation spots for its employees including beaches in the Carribean, winter resorts in the Andes, undersea facilities and ecotourism including huge tracts of reclaimed Brazilian rain forests and the Galapagos Islands as well as intensive study courses at several corporate sponsored universities along the eastern seaboard. Travel was by whatever was judged the most economical by the company, of course, but really, any long distance travel lately was done by the orbitals, and the difference between the maglev trains that connected the continent and the conventional SST's was just a matter of a couple hours at most. Jessica hadn't expected the kind of cyberware in her head now to work so smoothly. It was right out of trideo. She had always thought it'd be like some kind of voice in her head or something... nothing this seamless. She tried listening in on other conversations, homing in on a lovers' spat between a college kid and his older boyfriend in a black pinstripe behind her while Marissa talked about the cybernetic upgrade policy. No problem. Jessica looked around, straining to pick apart the low background buzz. She found that her concentration maxed out at around five different trains of thought. Not bad at all. She could have used this kind of an edge when she was in school. Still, listening to Marissa talk, she couldn't shake that message from Eiji. What was so important that she had to get in touch with him, and why was he being so cloak and dagger about it all? Lunch lasted a good two and a half hours, a bottle and a half of Chianti, and a pot of jasmine tea. By the time Jessica and Marissa left Bishonen's and headed back to the arcology, she had health insurance, her own office, a six figure salary, and yearly skiing vacations in Argentina starting tomorrow at 9:30 AM. And hanging behind all of that was still Eiji's message and the fact that there was a cellular phone in her coat pocket that she had never seen before. * According to the chronometer built into her headware, it was exactly 10:30 according to the Arcology's atomic clock when Jessica curled up on her monstrous sofa and set the phone down on the table in front of her. Eiji's private line was in the speed dial twenty times. Jessica took the hint. When the trideo projector came on, a 10cm tall Eiji was leaning against a wall she couldn't see floating in front of her face. "I'm glad you're still good at noticing the obvious." He wasn't wearing any makeup, and this was the first time he wasn't smiling since he had helped her move in. "That woman's trouble, Jessie. You better be careful." "Eiji, what the hell are you talking about?" Eiji stood up straight and started to pace around the holographic projection. "Do you remember seeing the badge she was wearing on her lab coat? With those chips they put in your head, you should have no problem." She thought about it and the image of the badge came back to her almost immediately. It was a small white rectangle with a computer tape along one side and Marissa's ID information - name, picture, and DNA sample, on the front face. "Yeah, I've got it. What's the deal? Looks fine to me." "Jessie, do you have an ID?" "Yeah..." What was he getting at? "Look at yours, will you?" She reached for her long coat and fished around in the pockets until she found it. "Well?" "If you notice, Jessica, the front of your card has the corporate logo in the background." Eiji was right. "Artemis Omnitechnology" was printed in italicized silver letters in front of a silver crescent moon. "Now, if you remember right, your doctor friend's badge didn't have that on it." "So what? Eiji, you're being real paranoid all of a sudden." "Damn right." Eiji put his hands on his hips and shook his head. "That isn't a corp ID. And then, when Mark checked your stuff, he put the electronic tag on it for the coatroom robot to file. The robot didn't take it. Turned out there was some kind of circuit built into that card that was interfering with the signal. Now I don't know what kind of project you signed on for, but whatever it was, Artemis isn't the only one involved. Think about it, Jessie. Have you even seen your baby?" "It's not my baby, Eiji." She didn't like where this was going. It made her stomach churn. How had she missed that? It was such a minor detail that she hadn't remembered it until Eiji had mentioned it. Now that he did, she could call up every instance where she saw Marissa's card and every time, it was the same unmarked white ID. "I was just a surrogate mother." "You're rationalizing. Anyway, it's irrelevant." Eiji had pulled a chair into the field and sat down. "My point is that there's something to this that you're missing, and whatever they haven't told you is probably something related to that project." He sighed, and his voice lost the warning edge it had held. "Look. All I'm saying is that you should be careful, OK? I don't want you to get hurt." "Alright, Eiji. I'll talk to Marissa and ask to see the computer records of the project. I'm sure that'll take care of everything. How's that?" She kept her voice even, barely. She could hear the strain in the way the pitch rose just slightly. "I'll call you tomorrow night at the club and I'll tell you what I find, OK?" Eiji shook his head and stood up. "Actually, I won't be around tomorrow. Shinji and I are taking a long weekend to go to Frisco. I'm going home right after this to pack and get some sleep. We've got to be at Newark by 6:00 tomorrow morning. I'll call you when I get to the hotel, OK?" He pushed the chair back out of the picture and blew her a kiss. "Thanks, Jessie. I'm glad you're doing this, for me anyway. And good luck." "Bye, Eiji. Have fun." "I will. Be careful. And by the way, keep the phone. Arigato." He bowed and cut the connection. The holograph disappeared and she was alone in the dark. Jessica shut the phone down and put it away in a desk drawer. What the hell was that all about? She rolled her eyes and looked out the window. Above the cloud line, the stars were out and the moon was full. She kicked off her shoes and headed for the bedroom. She had a full day tomorrow. If she was going to catch Marissa and ask her for the files, she'd have to do it early, before she started work. She got up off the couch and plugged the phone into the wall socket under the big window to recharge. She walked into the main room and down the short hallway, stopping in front of her diploma, now hanging next to her parents' wedding pictures on the walls. She wondered what they'd say now. Her old corp ID card was stuck in the corner of her diploma's frame, sort of a last memory of the three worst years of her life. Three years she had beaten, she told herself. In her head, the chrono beeped eleven times. Jessica walked into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Of all the rooms in her apartment, the bedroom was the smallest. The bare, simulated hardwood floor was covered in some of the best of the old throw rugs she had salvaged from her old apartment. Most of them were ones her grandmother had made at the end of the twentieth century. She stepped out of her jeans and her oversized shirt and stopped in front of the mirror. Even the incision mark had almost faded into nothing as the fake skin bonded with her real tissue and disappeared. She tossed her jeans into the overflowing laundry basket and pulled on a big white Seattle Fury sweatshirt and a pair of black boxer shorts. She crawled into bed and pulled the covers up. Outside, a corporate helicopter took off and flew by her window heading towards Newark Airport. "TV." The trideo projector across the room from her bed came to life on CNN. They were interviewing a bunch of young corporate brats in Buenos Aires who suiting up in camoflage BDU's and hyper velocity battle rifles for a trip to a corporate ecopreserve on one of the latest fads. Last year, Artemis Omni's biggest competitor, Carlyle Industries, came up with a bright idea for protecting the vast tracts of tropical forest that it had bought for biological research from poachers. Why bother hiring their own people, they reasoned, when you could sell "safaris" to rich people? For 10,000 credits and a signed waiver they'd fly them down to South America, outfit them with military hardware and the best communications gear, and set them to manning security posts with full rights to kill anyone trespassing on corporate soil. Usually nothing special anymore, except that this time a special group was being put together to go with Charlie Dane, some VIP kid from Carlyle, on a research trip for school. "God. Why the hell don't they show any real news anymore?" Jessica shook her head and changed the channel. Maybe there was a new movie playing. Jessica got up early and headed for her office only to find that when she called Marissa's personal phone to arrange the meeting she wanted, the doctor was no longer in the Arcology. The secretary told her doctors Chiang and Jenner were away on an important trip and no, he had no idea when they would be back. They hadn't left any other phone numbers and no, she couldn't see the records from the project even if she had once been involved with it. Then he hung up. The phone Eiji had given her rang. She answered it, but at first it was voice only. "Eiji? Is that you? Where's the picture?" "Close the door, Jessie. Now use a headset so nobody else can hear you and make sure any cameras in the room won't see the trid when I turn it on." Jessica did as he told her, holding the phone in her lap, hidden by the desk itself. "OK, done. Now do you want to tell me what the hell is going on? I thought you were in San Fransisco with your boyfriend." "I lied to you." The trid came on, and Jessica almost jumped out of her chair. Eiji was standing on the street. He was dirty, his clothes were torn up, and he had a long cut in his right cheek. Behind him, police surrounded his apartment building. Smoke and fire poured from a massive crater that had been blown out of one side right where his apartment was. "This is why." He held up a warning finger. "Be quiet. I can see your face. Don't overreact." Jessica closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm herself down. "What happened? Are you all right?" "I'm fine. Last night I lied to you so you'd think you knew where I was going. I did go home, but when I got there, I went to the security room and changed the tapes in the hall cameras to an older one that showed me going up to my apartment and going in. Then the building blew up. I was sneaking away when a bunch of guys saw me and came after me guns blazing. They chased me into the city. Took me all night to get rid of them." Eiji reached for something outside the phone's view and came back with a pistol. He snapped a new clip into the stock. "I don't know who they were, but they were waiting for me. Somebody was listening in on our little talk yesterday, because I told Shinji to go by the airport and he said the place was crawling with police." Eiji stuck the gun inside his jacket. "Wait a minute. If they were listening to our call before..." Jessica was sweating. It was beading up on her forehead and her palms were getting clammy. "Don't worry. I'm taking care of it. Did you talk to your doctor friend?" Jessica shook her head and closed her eyes. "No. Shit, she's gone. And her partner too. I couldn't get anything from their secretary either." Eiji nodded. "Figures. Listen up. They probably left the Arcology sometime last night. Either they were planning to from the start or they did as soon as they intercepted your call." Jessica opened her mouth to say something but Eiji silenced her with a raised hand. "Think about it. Who else would blow up my home? They're most likely monitoring the calls you make and receive. There might even be a bug in your headware." He started to pace back and forth. "Now then. Ifthey're not in the Arcology, there's a record of their departure. Most likely it's by helicopter, but it might be by car. You can check it out on your end, especially with your clearance. See if they left and where they went if possible. Chances are they took their project with them. Do yourself a favor Jessie. You're not safe anymore. Don't let on that you suspect or you might wind up dead. Find out what you can and meet me in the subway station under the World Trade Center at seven tonight after you get off work. Don't call me until then. I'll meet you there, OK?" Jessica nodded slowly, blinking back tears. "All right. I'll meet you." She hung up the phone and put it in a drawer. She forced herself to sit up straight. Eiji had put his life on the line to prove a point that she wasn't willing to listen to. Not until now, after it was almost too late. If she broke down now like she wanted to, someone who might be watching would see it and might try to investigate. Jessica got up and walked around her office until she calmed down. When her heart finally stopped trying to claw its way out of her chest and she sweat on her forehead had dried into a light oily sheen she had made up her mind. Someone had tried to kill her best friend because he had warned her about what she was trying to get into. Jessica sat down at her desk and connected her cyberdeck to the Artemis mainframe. As she jacked into the network, Eiji's burning home replayed itself over and over again. The information she was after was readily available from Transportation. The server took her clearance without question and opened its files to her. As she walked through the softly glowing green portals that represented code gates in the virtual landscape, the department's reality template asserted itself. As her cyberdeck downloaded and processed the custom environment, the system changed from a generic array of polygonal data packets into a long corridor with a towering bank of monitors that stood behind a long desk. Outside the carefully rendered windows, she could see files being transferred in and out of the system as aircraft taking off and landing in a massive airport. Other users pushed past her, heading for one of the smiling blond icons of attendant programs. Jessica spotted one a few sectors down and hurried towards it, scanning the monitors labeled "Departures" for and helicopters or cars leaving the Arcology between the time she and Marissa had gotten back to the Arcology and when she had called Eiji the night before. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a datapad, recording the file names in her online memory. By the time she had reached the desk, she had downloaded them all. "How may I help you today?" The icon smiled and stood at attention, waiting for a response. It looked and sounded the same as all the other Barbie clones, and as she looked closer, Jessica could tell that the grainy icons represented comparatively uncomplicated programs. Jessica pushed her datapad across the desk, loading the information into the attendant program's active memory. "I need you to scan all these files. I'm looking for a record of any trips taken by Marissa Chiang and Matthew Jenner." "One moment please." The icon wavered a bit and froze in place as it devoted its resources to scanning the data instead of maintaining the reality template. "Here you go, ma'am. Marissa Chiang and Matthew Jenner left yesterday at 11:03 PM by helicopter for Newark International Airport. There they boarded a corporate aircraft and took off for the corporate office in Washington, DC." The icon handed her data pad back. "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" "Yeah. Could you tell me if any corporate security vehicles were checked out between oh, 10:30 and 1:00 last night?" She didn't have time to be nervous or think about how much she didn't want to know the answer. "Certainly. Two security teams checked out vehicles last night at 10:45 PM and returned them at 5:30 AM." The icon assumed the same smile and tone it had used a moment ago. "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" "No, thank you. Please log me out." The icon smiled and nodded. First the reality template faded away and then cyberspace itself. She opened her eyes and unplugged the datajack. Marissa and her partner had left just before Eiji was attacked. And two corp teams went out right after she hung the phone up. Finally, they didn't come back until the morning. Jessica leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, feeling very weak and very stupid for letting herself get caught up in this whole mess. She was about to reach for her phone and call Eiji back when his warning caught her. She couldn't let on that she knew anything about it. Besides, all her evidence so far was circumstantial. She had to bide her time and wait until she could meet Eiji in person, which meant she had a job to do. Jessica checked the time. It was just getting to 9:00. Marissa had told her that most of the security personnel would be gathering in the lounge for breakfast. Jessica unplugged her cyberdeck, slung it over her shoulder, and headed out the door. Right now she could use something to calm her down. The network security consultants' lounge was a large room on the 402nd floor filled with couches, terminals, and smoke. The groan of the overworked air filtration system was a constant companion to the low buzz of conversation that filled the lounge. A long buffet table set up in front of the big window held coffee machines, and several service units containing all kinds of breakfast food from cereal to real fresh fruit. "Well, well. Look who's joined the club." A door opened in the side of the room and a shadow drifted out into the room, inky against the brilliant sunshine. "And here I was wondering when I'd get you back downstairs. Congratulations, Jess!" As she squinted and shielded her eyes from the sunlight, Dave Perriman extended a hand to her. She shook his hand tentatively and stared at him blankly. "Dave? What are you doing here?" "I work here. It's my real job." He flashed her his brilliant teeth and headed for the food. "Or didn't they tell you at Bioengineering?" He fixed himself a couple bagels and cream cheese. "Every department has its own security engineer. We monitor their systems and make sure nobody tries to intrude where they don't belong. Usually we just leave our decks on remote and have them alert us whenever an interdiction countermeasure goes down and then just check in once every hour. I happen to work at tech support." He offered her some hot coffee, which she accepted. "I keep up the cover I do because it's one of the biggest possible leaks in the system." "Yeah, I see what you mean." Because the support techs worked on so many different systems, it was an easy infiltration point for a potential corporate spy. "So what am I supposed to do? Just hang out here until something goes wrong?" Dave shrugged. "Basically." He laughed, his ice blue cybereyes sparkling. "Some job, isn't it?" He headed for a small square table and sat down across from her. "Don't worry about it. They'll find stuff for you to do. Especially Bio-E. They're always getting hit. Did they tell you what happened to the last guy?" Dave bit into a bagel, squeezing cream cheese out between the two crusty halves. His teeth were a brighter white than the cheese was. When Jessica shook her head slowly he rolled his eyes. "He got nailed by some kind of new virus that got into his headware and more or less gave him an electric lobotomy. They've got the guy locked up in a hospital in Jersey. He thinks he's an orange." "Oh my God..." Jessica's voice trailed off and her jaw hung. She put her fingertips up to her datajack slowly. "Could it happen again?" Dave laughed and shook his head, tearing off a chunk of sourdough and washing it down with a swig of Colombian java. "Probably not. At least not with the same program. After that incident all of us went in for an upgrade that blocks that kind of interference. You've got it in your deck. Besides, he was sloppy. We get updates on the latest computer news weeks before it ever sees a magazine. If you keep reading it, you can stay on the edge and take your own precautions. He got lazy. Thought he was hot shit and now he's a vegetable." "Well... a citrus fruit, Dave." Both of them cracked up and Jessica could feel the sick knot of worry in her gut wither under the combined attack of hot coffee and Dave's contagious laughter. "Hey... how much do I actually have to read through to stay on top?" Dave wiped his eyes on his sleeve and took a deep breath. "Oh about two hundred pages a day. New viruses, countermeasures, the latest trick on how to tweak a couple more picoseconds out of your deck." He winked at her. "Light reading, really." He sat back and stuffed half a bagel into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Jessica smiled and settled back in the flexible plastic chair. "You're sick, Dave, you know that?" Light reading... even with her enhanced memory, staying on top of her game looked to be a full time job even if actually working only took up five minutes to the hour. She polished off her coffee and set her deck down on the table. The matte, gray case was unadorned, unlike Dave's glittering metallic black box or the tye dyed monster hanging from the shoulder of a purple haired kid who looked like he should still be in high school. Dave finished his breakfast and shook his head disapprovingly. "You're going to have to fix that, Jessica. It just won't do for you to have an unmodified rig. After all, this is the big league. Got a handle yet?" "A what?" "A handle. You know, like a nickname you use on the net to let people know who you are without really letting them know?" Dave rolled his eyes and waggled a finger in front of her face. "I swear... you'd think someone like you would remember that from college. Anyway... a handle. Got one?" Jessica blinked at him. "Umm... I don't know what I'd pick." "Well, it can be anything. Mine's Black Magic. I'm sure you can guess why." Dave pointed over to the purple haired kid who was munching on scrambled eggs and drinking hot chocolate through a straw. "Foster there goes by Acid Man." His voice dropped and Dave leaned closer. "Though unofficially, we all call him Wiz-Kid. Little bastard's sixteen and already has a degree from NYU. Still lives at home with his folks too." Dave shook his head and laughed. "But you see what I mean? A handle's your identity. It's what we all know you as. Any ideas?" Dave pushed his chair back and set his sparkling black deck on the table in front of him. He crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. "Well?" "Umm... let's see...." Jessica pursed her lips, thinking. They hadn't said anything about this to her during the ten week refresher she had taken... though the Security people were very impressed with her performance. She hadn't forgotten anything she had learned, and had even picked up the odd new trick or two. One of the reviewers had called her a viper on the net. It sounded corny, but if she had to have a handle, it was the best she could come up with. "How about Viper?" Dave shook his head. "Sorry, already taken." He pointed to a tall Amerind girl with an green, scaly deck. "Any other ideas? Maybe some else to do with snakes?" "How about just Snake?" "Too plain. Come on, Jess. Try harder." "OK, OK... shit." And then it came to her. She straightened, excited. "I got it. Silicon Serpent. How's that?" Dave's eyebrows arched. "Not bad. I'm impressed. Now that you've officially got an identity, I can introduce you to everyone else." Before she could stop him, Dave stood up and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hey, boys and girls, listen up! It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you all our newest member. Silicon Serpent here just got moved into the empty Bio-E slot. She's and old friend of mine from the office made it big." He grinned down at her. "A story she's going to have to tell me one of these days. But she's all right. Let's make her feel welcome, OK?" Jessica thought she could hear applause, but any sound from the room was totally drowned out by the roar of blood rushing into her rapidly blushing ears. Chapter 4: Eiji waved to her as she came up the escalator. Jessica hated the subways. It had taken her a total of two sweaty rides through the ancient, claustrophobic tunnels to convince her to buy a car. His face was covered up by a heavy duty respirator and a wraparound visor and he was wearing a full length ballistic cloth great coat with ceramic plate inserts pulled tightly around his body, despite the sweltering heat. With him were Shinji, in similar costume, and someone Jessica had never seen before. Eiji motioned to his companions and they hurried to meet her, footfalls echoing off the grimy tile walls. "I'm glad you made it." Eiji shook her hand and pulled her into a hug. He leaned close to whisper into her ear. "Did anyone follow you?" Jessica shook her head. "Can we get out of here? These places always freak me out." Eiji nodded. "Sure." He let her go and led the three of them back to the platform as a graffiti covered train was gliding up on its silent maglev tracks. The sleek bullet shaped cars had been installed near the turn of the century to attract the growing megacorporations, but as the arcologies grew, the need for the subway to move people shrank until the subways became more of a fast, efficient way to move goods and money than people. Eiji headed for one of the cars not converted for cargo capacity and motioned for them to follow. Jessica complied gladly. At least the trains themselves were air conditioned. Eiji stayed silent until the train was moving at full speed. A couple of street people were sprawled out on the bench seats. These Eiji ignored. He pulled off his breather and inhaled the chilled, filtered air. "Okay. Introductions. Jessica, you know Shinji." Eiji pointed to the other man. Under his breather was the wrinkled face of a man who might be someone's grandfather. "This is Dr. Peter Rosenberg. Peter, Jessica Bradley." Jessica smiled and offered the doctor her hand. "Nice to meet you." She gave Eiji a questioning look. Another doctor? "Pleasure's mine." Peter shook her hand and turned to Eiji. "Is she the one you were talking about?" Eiji nodded. "One and the same." "Mmm." Dr. Rosenberg sat down on one of the scarred plastic bench seats and looked up at Jessica. "Eiji tells me that you involved yourself in an experiment with Artemis Bioengineering in exchange for your new cyberware and a job as a security consultant, and that you delivered a child a couple days ago. Am I correct?" Jessica nodded. "Right. And they said the baby had died." "And then last night Eiji and Shinji spent hours evading well coordinated teams of assassins." The doctor shook his head. "After he warned you about the possibility that you were being decieved. Doesn't sound good. Eiji asked me to run a couple scans on your implant systems to see if there is anything beyond what they said they put in. With your permission, of course." "What do you mean? Things that don't belong there?" The doctor shrugged. "I'm sure you can guess, Jessica." She shuddered. She had read stories of corporations ensuring loyalty in people with everything from behavior chips to hidden poison reservoirs. Mostly wild rants from crazy consiracy theorists. "Well, I've heard all the stories, but..." Peter held up a warning hand. "But nothing. It happens." The train started to slow down. The doctor rose and headed for the door. "My offices are nearby. Will you be coming or not?" Jessica pulled her coat around her tighter and slipped on her breather. Even as the fetid air of the subway station rolled into the train car, she still felt cold. The possibility that one of those things might be inside her own body... "Okay. You've got a deal." Rosenberg led them out of the subway station and crossed the street to an old, but well maintained brownstone. Over the door was a sign that read "Blanche and Rosenberg, MD" in plain red letters on a grimy background, flanked by twin Caduceus. "My partner and I keep an office out here. Not everyone lives in an Arcology and not everyone has a health plan from a supranational corporation." He slotted his credit card in the maglock. The lights changed from red to green. Pulling a ring of keys out of his coat pocket, Rosenberg unlocked the four deadbolts and opened the door. "It's not the safest of places, but I do what I can. Come on in." Inside, the den had been converted to a cozy, softly lit waiting room full of old couches and chairs arranged around a trid projector. Across the hallway, what looked like a dining room housed a white enameled reception desk, currently unoccupied. A set of stairs led up to the second floor, and a bright fluorescent light leaked out of the kitchen. All the carpeting had been torn up, replaced by beige tiles, and Jessica could hear an air filter for a much larger building thrumming from somewhere upstairs. While it might be fine for taking care of everyday respiratory infections or the odd basal cancer, the place looked ridiculously outmoded compared to the state of the art medical suites in the Arcology. "Umm... doctor?" Rosenberg paused on the stairs and looked over his shoulder. "Yes, Jessica?" "Are you sure you have the equipment to do this? I mean, this office and all..." The older man laughed and nodded. "There are many parts to this building, Miss. I assure you, there will be no problems here." He turned and started walking again. In the dim lighting, Jessica noticed that every time he put his weight on a step, the old wood supports bowed in the middle, as if threatening to give under the weight of a man who looked no larger than herself. Eiji and Shinji, silent since they had arrived, ascended the stairs together. The stairs held. Jessica shook her head and followed. Something was going on here that she didn't know about. Rosenberg was waiting for them in a small examination room. There was very little standing room - just a small walkway around a table in the center. All the space on every wall was crammed full of diagnostic computers, scanning devices, and things she had never seen before. "Here we go. Jessica, if you wouldn't mind lying on the table here?" His back was to her as he hunted and pecked at an old style keyboard. She complied, and Rosenberg herded the others out. "This is pretty simple." He reached under the table and guided some kind of armature with a scanning device on it out until it rested over her chest. "All I'm doing right now is scanning the systems in your body." He smiled. Rosenberg had crow's feet around his hazel eyes and laugh lines at his mouth. He tapped some more keys on the computer and the scanner came alive with a spectral green glow. In less than a minute, Rosenberg was finished. He passed the scanner over her torso, neck, head, arms, and legs and turned back to the computer. Jessica sat up and looked over his shoulder. On the screen her body was a grey silhouette with different systems highlighted in gold. She saw her datajack, her mnemonic enhancer, and the internal RAM buffer, each wired into different portions of her brain. All the cyberware they had put in was in her head, in all the right places... except for two tiny specks in her neck and two identical ones in her thighs. Rosenberg closed his eyes and shook his head. "I thought so." He pointed to the four points. "Do you know what these are, Jessica?" She shook her head, but she could guess. The idea made her stomach churn. "They're not... one of those, are they?" Rosenberg nodded. "I'm afraid so. Each of those is a small explosive charge. One at each of your carotid and femoral arteries. If they detonate, you bleed to death in less than a minute. Right now they're not active, which means that for the moment, Artemis isn't watching you very closely. It also means I can take them out without anyone noticing." The sick feeling in her gut disappeared. Jessica let out a sigh and her heart stopped trying to burst out of her chest. "My God... what's happening to me?" All of a sudden, she was afraid. Not angry for what happened to Eiji, but terrified that it might happen to her next. "What did I do to deserve this?" Rosenberg put an arm around her shoulders. It was warm, strong, and heavy. "I don't know, Jessica, but for your sake, we had best figure that out... after I remove the charges." * Rosenberg handed her a small plastic bag. In it were four spheres, each about the size of a pinhead. "Those things could have killed you, Jessica. Eiji was smart to bring you here when he did. If you were caught looking through sensitive files, the bombs might have gone off." "Just throw them away. I don't want them around me." Jessica craned her neck and looked into the small mirror on the wall. There were no traces of the surprisingly quick and easy procedure. "You ought to keep them, Jessie." Eiji opened the door and stuck his head in. "If Artemis is using them to track your location, having them around will help keep any kind of suspicion off your back." It made sense, so she complied. "You don't think Artemis will know that the charges aren't in her body anymore, do you, Pete?" Rosenberg shook his head. "No. The charges don't have the kind of communication circuitry that they would need to be able to make that kind of complex connection." "So as long as I carry these around, they'll think they're still in my body." Jessica slipped the packet into her hip pocket. "That way, if they catch me doing something and set the charges off, all I'd have to do is log out of the system fast and they'll think I've been killed, right?" Rosenberg nodded. "That's right. Of course, if that happens, you had best disappear before anyone sends a cleanup crew to make sure you really are gone. This brings up an interesting point that Eiji had asked me before he brought you to me. What do you want to do now? It's entirely possible that you could just go back to your job and carry on with your life as usual. You could just try to forget it all and pretend none of this had ever happened." Eiji came into the room. "Or you can go after them and find out what they did to you and why they tried to kill me. Those people lied to you, Jessie. They used you for one of their experiments and now they're trying to shut you out of it. You're just a lab rat to them, Jessie. They did what they wanted with your body, grew something inside of you and then they took it away and stuck you behind a desk with a big paycheck to shut you up. But if you do that, they'll keep coming after me because they know I got away." "Eiji, stop it!" Jessica clapped her hands over her temples. "Just stop! You're right, okay? I shouldn't have done it and you told me so. Now can't you quit rubbing it in?" She shut her eyes and clenched her fists so tight her knuckles cracked. "I just want all of this to stop." She felt Eiji's light touch on her shoulder and looked up. "Jessie, honey, I'm sorry. I know you're hurt, but I never meant to rub anything in." He smiled. In the pale fluorescent light, his eyes sparkled. His voice was tight. "But unless we find out what happened in that lab, it'll never end. Not unless we make sure they can't get away with doing watever the hell they want in the name of science." He offered her a hand. "What do you say, Jessie? Do we hide and hope the problem goes away, or do we make them accoutable for what they did to you?" Jessica looked up into Eiji's eyes. He was smiling. Shinji came up behind him and kissed him on the side of the neck. "Oh come on. Like you don't know what I'm going to say already. Give me a break!" She forced herself to laugh... a series of three staccato barks that were as fake as Eiji's lacquered fingernails. At least it helped untie the knot in her guts a little. "Just tell me what I need to do, all right?" Eiji nodded. "Are we safe in here, Pete? The last thing I want to happen is for someone to be spying on us." "Of course." Rosenberg circled the table and went over to a bank of monitors along the far wall displaying the last reading of Jessica's vital signs from the minor procedure. He stood on his tiptoes and reached around the top screen. Suddenly, the whole bank slid into the wall and to the side, revealing a small elevator. He stepped aside, making room for the others to precede him. "After you, of course." Eiji smiled. "Well, Jessie, ladies first." * The elevator opened up in the middle of a short hallway that led to a large, cold, windowless room that had the astringent smell of antiseptics. Jessica stepped out into it and looked around at the rows of shelves lining the walls. On each of the shelves were hundreds of glass display cases storing a number of different cybernetic implants in a sterile vacuum until they could be implanted. Rosenberg followed her out into the room. "What? You think I keep a doctor's office out here in the middle of nowhere for my health?" He laughed. "My dear, please close your mouth. It's unseemly for a woman of your beauty." Jessica blushed. The rush of blood to her skin helped warm her in the dry, cool air. "What is this place?" It was the first time Jessica had heard Shinji speak. He had a deep, husky baritone that filled the room with its warm sound. He was standing next to Eiji, arm in arm, and staring around the room at the cases. "Where did you get all of this stuff?" "Sorry son, can't name my sources." Rosenberg led them to a round metal table at the far end of the long, rectangular chamber and sat down in one of the chairs. "This is the showroom where I do business with clients who don't like their names to become common knowledge. If it's a safe place to talk you want, then this is the best you'll get, my friends." He pointed to the synthaleather padded armchairs ringing the table. "Please, sit down. Try to relax a little. For the time being, you're all safe. Now Eiji, what exactly is it that you're proposing?" Eiji detached himself from his boyfriend and sat down across from Rosenberg. Jessica and Shinji seated themselves across from each other as well. Eiji pulled out a datapad and set it on the table. "Basically, I want to know why Artemis is trying to kill me and why they put a terminator switch in Jessica." His fists were clenched so tightly the tendons were starting to stand out on the backs of his hands. "I want some fucking answers and I'm proposing that we go and get them!" Eiji was on his feet. The chair was pushed over and his hands were planted firmly on the table, fingers splayed wide. Jessica could hear the sound of his teeth grinding over the drone of the air conditioner. Shinji was at his side before Jessica had time to push her chair back. He pressed himself close to Eiji's body, whispering to him in rapid fire Japanese. Eiji met his eyes and said something back. He put his arms around Eiji's waist and eased him away from the table, and wrapped him up close. "Hush, dear. Calm down. It's not your fault any of this happened. Nobody blames you. It's not your fault." Shinji took Eiji's face in both hands and stared down the unexpected flare of rage until Eiji let out a quiet whimper that quickly degenerated into full blown sobs. "I am sorry. He blames himself for letting all of this happen in the first place. Please forgive him." Shinji hugged his boyfriend tightly, pressing Eiji's head to his shoulder and letting him cry. He looked over at Jessica, his long black hair framing a very worried face. Jessica got up and took half a step towards the two men. "Eiji, I'm sorry I didn't listen. I should have, but it's too late now. None of this is your fault." She was about to say it was her fault, and that she was the one who had volunteered against his better judgement, but Rosenberg cut her off with a wave of his hand. He leaned over to her and beckoned her close, whispering in her ear. "Don't try to explain yourself to him, Jessica. It isn't going to help any." Shinji was whispering to Eiji in Japanese again. He took him by the shoulders and held him at arm's length, forcing Eiji to look up at him. Finally, he lapsed back into English. "OK?" Eiji just closed his eyes and nodded. He took a deep, shuddering breath and swallowed. He dried his face on the sleeve of his shirt and pushed his sweaty hair back. "Jessie, I'm sorry you had to see that." Jessica shook her head. "It's all right, Eiji. I understand. And I want to know the truth too. They did something to me back there and I have to know what it is." Now, it was personal. At first, she had been hoping she could just go on and forget that the whole experiment ever happened, especially when they told her the baby had died. And even when Eiji had warned her and almost gotten killed for it, she thought that maybe there was a way she could just go an and the problem would go away. Even when the Marissa left the arcology for the first time in years. She clung to the hope that maybe the problem would solve itself and she could just enjoy her new life in peace. And then Rosenberg pulled four tiny charges out of her body. Charges Artemis doctors had put inside her so that the corporation could kill her if she ever became a threat. Now it was personal. "I'm through with it, Eiji. I'm sick and tired of being lied to and treated like a lab animal. I say fuck their shit and find out what they're up to and make the bastards pay for screwing with my head and my friends' lives." As she turned to thoughts of revenge, her mind replayed her first meeting with Marissa the day she agreed to be a part of that project. The doctor's smile was different this time: cold and predatory. And those eyes... those abyssal fake pupils that looked at her like a piece of medical equipment... "But I need your help, Eiji. I can't do any of this by myself. I don't know what you've been doing, but you've got something going on here that you never told me before." Jessica swept her arm around the room, pointing at the fortune in cybernetics lining the walls. "Whatever it is, I need you if I'm ever going to find out what they did to me." "I know, Jessie. And I need you too." Eiji's voice was still ragged, and he hiccupped every few seconds. He hugged Shinji tight and kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks, hon. I needed that." Shinji blushed right to the tips of his ears. In all the time Jessica had known the two of them, Eiji and Shinji had never kissed in front of other people. "I know." Rosenberg cleared his throat loudly. It echoed around the room and made everyone turn in his direction. "Now that everybody is friends again, I believe we should turn our attention to the task at hand. We all agree that something needs to be done about Artemis Omnitechnology's little cloak and dagger game, so now is the time where we decide what we are going to do about it, am I right?" One corner of Eiji's mouth turned up in an odd, one sided, half grin. Except for his red eyes and puffy, tear streaked cheeks, he seemed better. He slipped out of Shinji's arms and picked up the datapad on the table. "This is all the information I have about the layout of the Artemis Omnitech Arcology. Now I think the best way for us to do this we're going to have to get some outside help." He sat down and pressed a few keys on the datapad. A list of aliases that would have made the network security crew up at Artemis jealous started to scroll down the screen. "And I think I know the perfect people to ask. * Inside her head, Marissa's chrono beeped. It was time to feed Adam again. That was what Matt had named the project: the Advanced DNA Augmentation Method. It was a silly name, but it gave Marissa a way to identify the life she was helping to raise that sounded better than "the project." She unplugged her datajack and put the stack of data chips away for the night. With Matt away from the small Washington DC facility and his insistence on secrecy, Marissa was the only one present to care for him. She took a bottle out of the refrigerator and put it in a hot water bath to heat. Then she dimmed the lights. Adam's eyes weren't open yet, and if her experience with more conventional mammals was correct, too much light would be painful, and potentially damaging. When the bottle was warm, she set it on her desk and went into the converted storage room that she was using as a nursery. Inside, it was totally dark. The only light that seeped into the inky little room came from the dim outer lab or from anemic little green and yellow LED's on the monitors. She closed her eyes, internally adjusting the cybernetic organs' irises to allow in more light. When she opened them again, she could see. Even though his eyes were still closed, Adam sensed her. He either heard her coming or smelled her, but he turned his head towards her, his tiny, wet black nose quivering as he scented the air. As she came closer to the portable neonatal ICU, Adam made a little mewling sound and reached up towards her. She scooped him up, cradling him in one arm while supporting his neck with her shoulder. Adam's hands found their way to one of her fingers and they fastened around it reflexively... just like a normal human baby. "Hey, Adam. Time for your dinner." Marissa carried Adam back to her desk and held the bottle up to his face. Whiskers and nose quivering, he sensed its presence and reached for it, pulling the nipple into his mouth. As Adam snuggled into her arms gently suckling away at the bottle, Marissa ran her fingers through his soft, fuzzy coat. In all physical respects, Adam was the perfect combination of two totally different species. The human portion of his composite genome gave him, among other things the skeleton to support bipedal movement, ten fingers with two opposable thumbs, a pair of plantigrade, five toed feet, and a host of neurological abilities that made him at least theoretically the intellectual equal of any human being. Despite all of that, Adam was still very clearly not human. he still looked more like a puppy than a baby. He was covered in tan and black fur, inherited from the German Shepherd she had selected for the canine template. He had a puppy's face, from the short muzzle to the fuzzy ears that folded over at the tips. As he drank, his tail, almost as long as his torso, swished back and forth against Marissa's side. It was likely that it would greatly improve his sense of balance when he started walking, like an acrobat using a staff on a high wire, and he had furless pads on his palms, fingers, and the soles of his feet, a relic of the tough pads on the bottom of his canine ancestor's paws. Marissa rubbed his belly gently. Adam crooned in response and clutched her finger. "Hey, now you behave, you little devil." Marissa couldn't help but smile. It was like holding a teddy bear that moved on its own. She knew she should try to maintain a distant scientific perspective. Stay detached, avoid anthropomorphizing her subject. Everything she had learned in college. Unfortunately, in this case, that was impossible. Adam was more than an animal. He was growing, in many ways just like a human child would, only faster due to specially developed hormones to help him physically mature more quickly. And on top of all of that, he was more adorable than any baby or puppy had the right to be. Adam finished his bottle and Marissa put him over her shoulder to burp him. As she held him, he nuzzled her cheek with his cold button nose. "Who am I kidding?" She sighed and kissed Adam between the ears. Her rational scientist's mind insisted that she was imprinting herself on him during a critical period in his early life where he formed a parental association with the first person he came in contact with. It wasn't supposed to be any different than the experiments she did with chicks when she was an undergrad at Rutgers. Ever since she had pulled Adam from Jessica Bradley's womb, however, something else spoke... a part of her mind that she never thought about before. And that part told the rest of her mind and body that her rational, scientist's mind was full of shit. Adam looked up at her and snuggled his furry little body closer to her chest. Marissa cradled him gently and met his gaze. Adam had these huge, dark, puppy dog eyes, which was appropriate, she supposed. She smiled down at him and scritched her finger under his chin. "I hope you know I'm falling for you." Marissa tickled Adam's tummy, tracing spiral patterns in his soft, creamy bellyfur. "Mmmmm..." Adam smiled. A tiny pink crescent of tongue peeked out the tip of his muzzle and he batted at her finger, clutching it instinctively. He pulled it up to his mouth and started sucking on it. Marissa laughed. His rough tongue scraped at her fingertip. It tickled. "Mmmaaaah..." Adam blinked. His ears folded back, lying flat against his skull. "Mmm aaahhh mmmm..." Marissa nearly dropped him. He talked! In two weeks, he had already talked! Adam seemed a little alarmed by the sudden movement. His ears perked forward and he stared up at her. "Mmaaahm?" Where on earth had he learned that? Marissa looked around the room. Aside from talking to him a little when she fed him, bathed him, or groomed his fur, Marissa had been trying to keep contact to a minimum. What in the lab could have taught him what to say? Marissa scanned the room, searching for some kind of unpredicted stimulus. Dr. Jenner had left instructions that "contact with the subject must be kept to a minimum in order to keep out any confounding behavioral factors." Matthew wanted Adam kept in as close to isolation as possible. Marissa hadn't exactly been as diligent as she could be... not after the first few days when Adam watched her from the incubator, fixing her with that stare of his. Where had he heard that much speech? Marissa picked him up and carried him back over to his bed. Adam's eyelids were already starting to droop, and he yawned widely. When she laid him down, she noticed something in the corner of the clear plastic box. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands. It was the manual remote for the trideo projector. Marissa thought she had misplaced it a couple days ago. Loose strands of fuzz sprouted from a few of the keys. Marissa looked down at Adam, who was lying on his belly, asleep. His little tail swayed back and forth, and his muzzle opened and closed slowly. "You're a bright little guy, aren't you?" She smiled and ruffled his fur. As she shut off the light and turned to go, she froze. Marissa looked back over her shoulder at the sleeping infant creature sucking its thumb in a hospital incubator. He had called her "Mom." Chapter 5: Jessica had just logged out of the Artemis network. Her shift was over, and the greasy faced East Indian kid that did night security was signing in. Having to keep coming to work every day, protecting the corporation that had planted killer explosives in her body, made her sick, but Eiji insisted that she had to keep up appearances while he went around gathering the personnel they needed. Breaking into Artemis Omnitechnologies was proving to be a much harder task than Jessica had thought. Fortunately, Eiji had also turned out to be much more adept at planning such operations than she had ever thought. That bothered her somewhat. What other secrets had Eiji kept from her over the years? If he moonlighted as a "Johnson," what else did he do on the side that she didn't know about? Jessica waved goodnight to the kid and headed for the elevators without saying a word. She couldn't even pronounce his name. She slotted her ID and sent the elevator back down to her apartment level. She reached into her pocket and rattled the little plastic tube that contained the four tiny charges. Rosenberg had drilled it into her head that she needed to keep them on her body at all times... just in case. Well, in the past four months, Jessica had found no reason not to doubt his word. If Artemis knew anything about what was going on within their little circle of associates, they had done nothing about it. Eiji figured they didn't know. He'd been careful. As far as anyone could tell, life was going on as normal. He still saw her, and she still went out to Bishonen's a lot. Jessica had been nervous about it before, but Eiji had brought up an interesting point. "If you stop coming, Jessie, any anyone IS watching you, they'll know something's up." Eiji had poked a purple enameled finger against her nose. "Besides, nobody's come after me or Shinji since they blew up my apartment. My guess is they think they scared me into being a good girl... er... boy." Eiji had been wearing a silk kimono. It was all black, and to the uneducated observer, looked like any other oriental robe, except Jessica had bought it for him at a women's boutique in the Arcology mall. Shopping for Eiji was easy. It was like getting presents for a sister. Jessica had gotten a kick out of that one. He had done his hair up in a bun on the back of his head and put two chopsticks in it to hold it together. Shinji had said he looked like a geisha. Eiji had laughed, climbed over the bar, and wrapped his arms around Shinji's waist. "I'll be your geisha, if that's what you wish, dear." Her phone rang as she was about to open her door. She activated it voice only. "Hello?" "Hey, Jessie. It's Eiji. Are you busy?" She put her keys away. "No, I was just getting off work. What's up?" "Oh, I was just hoping you could come out to dinner, that's all. There's this place over in the Koyoshi complex that Shinji and I discovered. Great hibachi. Can you meet us there?" Jessica managed to get a foot in the elevator door before it closed, nearly dropping the phone in the process. "Um... sure. What time?" She straightened and smoothed out the her frumpy green sweatshirt. The elevator doors closed, and the computer prompted her for her destination. "Parking, level 3." One of the perks Artemis was using to try and keep her quiet was a decent place to keep her car. It didn't take ten minutes to make it to the street anymore. A carrot instead of the four tiny, exploding sticks they tried to stick in her body. "Just come. We'll be waiting for you. Gotta go now. Hugs!" The phone clicked, and Eiji was gone. Jessica put it away and leaned against the old looking oak paneling that had been installed last month. What the hell was that all about? Why was Eiji asking her out to another Japanese place? And why hibachi? Eiji hated hibachi. As a matter of fact, Eiji hated fake Oriental food in general on a matter of principle. The first time she had gone out with him, before she knew he was "like that," she had suggested a hibachi place. He blew up on her. "They're idiots, Jessie. Standing there flipping butcher's knives over a hot grill and making smiley faces with cooking oil... it's pathetic. The food isn't even Japanese." The elevator doors opened onto the slate gray landscape of Parking Level 3. Rank upon rank of fluorescent lights glared at the mosaic of cars, sport utilities, and motorcycles that were crammed together between the yellow lines painted in the ferrocrete. She turned left and headed for row 37, where her faded, hunter green monster waited patiently for her. The old Crown Vic hunkered down over its wheels like some overgrown beast waiting to pounce one of the tiny imported rice rockets that surrounded it. Jessica patted the hood. The 2025 Vic was one of the last cars to have a totally metal body. Jessica loved it. The car had stopped bullets before. A few spots of paint gleamed brighter in the harsh light than the rest of the vehicle, silent evidence of ballistic encounters in the past. She punched in her security code on the door handle and the car unlocked itself and growled to a start. Jessica settled deeply into the old, synthleather bucket seat. The cushions accepted her presence willingly, conforming as they long had to the particular idiosyncracies of her body. She turned the key in the ignition and the big American V-8 came growling to life. If there was one thing Jessica could never stand in life it was little cars. Jessica patted the tiny vial holding the terminator switch in her pocket. Then she pulled out of the parking garage and headed for the street. * The Koyoshi corporate complex, by comparison to the Artemis arcology, was a low, sprawling affair tucked away near a long unused army base in central New Jersey. Behind the serpentine ferrocrete palisade, a series of buildings looking like oversized traditional Japanese pagodas sprawled throughout their vast, flat property, lit from below by massive halogen spotlights that provided daylight even this long after dark. This part of the Garden State was as flat as any in the midwest. During the entire drive, Jessica had seen nothing but a giant yard full of new and old industrial and corporate buildings, square pillars that jutted into the sky like black, jagged teeth. At least Koyoshi was doing something different with their little patch of dirt... though it was something that should have made Eiji sick. She pulled up to a set of steel double doors marked "Visitors" and waited. "Business here?" The black liveried guard set down his assault rifle and took a data pad out of his back pocket. Jessica couldn't see him well in the dark, but the gun he carried was an obvious enough bulge over his shoulder. He was just a shadow hovering outside her car with an assault rifle. "I'm just meeting a friend for dinner. I'm supposed to meet at the hibachi place in a few minutes." Jessica kept both hands on the wheel and sat back against the seat. "Do you need my ID?" The shadow nodded. "Sure." Jessica handed her card over. He ran it through his data pad and handed it back. "Alright. have a nice meal, ma'am." He stepped back and the vault like doors slid apart. The guard waved her through, and Jessica drove from the night into a world of a constant, artificial sunrise. She drove through the forest of buildings, feeling like a bug crawling around human sized buildings. Jessica never could remember Eiji's lectures on what to call traditional Japanese buildings, but she was sure they weren't supposed to be this big. As she approached the compound, she crossed a wide, flat field between the outer wall and the first of the faux-traditional structures, noticing for the first time the narrow barrels of machine guns jutting from turrets on the wall. Even the red tiles on the building walls housed little bulges here and there. She doubted even a small army could make it across the wide open field of fire if all those guns opened up. She laughed nervously. "I must be getting paranoid." Paranoid or smarter. If she noticed these things now, maybe she'd notice the ones Artemis hid throughout the arcology when the time came to go looking for the answers she deserved. She looked up at one silent sentry gun and fixed her eyes on the road ahead. First thing was first. Somewhere in this Shinto shrine to the Yen was a corny restasurant where Eiji, and likely several others people she might not know were waiting for her. * "Right this way, please." The maitre 'd's short legs propelled him through the crowded lobby in a way that the taller Jessica found difficult to emulate. She pushed her way past a trio of businessmen, avoiding their flushed faces. Most of the patrons were done with their meals and on their way home, and life within a corporate compound provided great transportation, so the sake flowed freely here. Jessica found it difficult to get by them without holding her nose to keep out the smell of rice liquor. The flowing folds of the little oldster's hakama disappeared around a black lacquered doorframe. Jessica hurried to catch up. Eiji and four other people waited on a wraparound bench around the massive grill/table while a hispanic man in a white gi and chef's hat arranged the ingredients for the meal. He laid out strips of beef, chicken, and shrimp in gleaming steel bowls next to a tray of white rice and a strainer full of fresh vegetables. It might not be real Japanese, but at least it was real food, instead of the processed soy protein imitation stuff proles like she had been subsisted on. Eiji and the others were drinking tea and doing their best to ignore the powerful aroma of raw onions that filled the private dining room. Eiji sat directly across from the door. He saw her first and waved. "Hey, Jessica. You didn't have any problem finding the place, did you?" He snatched up some pickled vegetables from a small plate in front of him and pointed at an open spot with his loaded chopsticks. "Have a seat, and we'll start." Jessica sat down. The dining room was walled in white silk screen. Silhouettes of other diners and servers flitted around behind them. The host bowed once and stepped out of the room, closing the sliding door. If anyone was trying to spy on them, his shadow would show up. Jessica stole a peek at the man next to her. Seated, the blond, buzz cut giant was as tall as she was standing. She craned her neck a little to get a look under the table. At least one vaguely weapon shaped shadow lurked just out of sight. "Alright, Eiji, what's up?" She stared across the grill at him as the chef started to draw cartoons on the hot grill in vegetable oil. "Whatever are you talking about, Ms. Bradley?" Eiji folded his hands in front of his chest. His customary nail polish was gone. So was his ever present body glitter. He had even gotten a haircut. Eiji sat perfectly still, staring back at her over a sizzling Mickey Mouse out of black rimmed, slightly tinted round glasses. He looked conservative. He almost looked straight. Jessica had never seen Eiji wear a suit before. The man sitting across the table from her in his black suit with the white collarless shirt and the black onyx buttons wasn't her friend. He looked like a corporate big shot... or a hit man. The chef picked up her cup and flipped it in the air. It clattered to the table right side up and he poured tea into it over his left shoulder. She picked up the round ceramic cup and took a sip. Her little finger pointed at the smiling face on the grill. If Eiji noticed what she was doing, he ignored her. "Now that we're all here, we can begin." He rose and walked around the table, handing a small data disc and a reader to each of them. Jessica followed him with her eyes. He nodded slightly to each of the others, shaking hands with each of them. Eiji never shook hands either. This was not Eiji. Everything was different, the clothes, the makeup, the handshakes... even the way he walked. Eiji's hips swayed back and forth just a little every time he took a step, in part due to long years of training in a number of martial arts. She had asked him about that once, when they had first met. She had caught up to him on the way to class and noticed the way he walked through his light cotton chinos. "I do that because I'm moving from my center, Jessie." Eiji put his fist to his abdomen, between his navel and his belt. "Right here." "What for?" She had never seen a martial artist before... except on the trid shows. He laughed. "More power, better balance. When you walk, you move from your shoulders, basically falling and catching yourself with your foot. I keep my balance better, and I get more power when I move." He looked around, spotting a discarded slab of ferrocrete. It was old and only a couple centimeters thick, but Eiji still had to strain to lift it. At 17, Eiji wasn't exactly going to win any iron man contests. He finally did manage to get it standing upright, however, and took a few steps back. "Watch what happens when I walk normally and kick the thing." He closed distance, walking upright, and kicked it. The slab wobbled for a few seconds, and fell over, kicking up a cloud of dust. He propped it back up and went back over to her. "See what I mean? No power." At the time, Eiji still had a slight accent. All his R's were silent and he had a tendency to draw out his O's. Jessica hadn't the slightest idea what to look for, and she told him so. "Actually, Eiji... no. I don't see." Eiji sighed dramatically, quite a feat through his bulky breather mask, and hunched up his shoulders, raising his arms heavenward in exasperation. He dropped his arms as he exhaled, returning to a normal posture. "Okay, now watch what happens when I move from my center instead of my shoulders." He shifted his weight slightly, and bent his knees. Eiji set down his backpack and took a deep breath, staring at the ferrocrete, sizing up his target. He stayed there, standing, knees slightly bent, hands out for balance, for several seconds. Jessica looked around, feeling embarrased as other students stopped what they were doing to see what the weird little Jap kid was doing. She must have had her back turned when Eiji finally moved. All she heard was the scrape of shoes on pavement and the sharp exhalation of breath through a respirator. Then there was a hard cracking sound. Jessica whirled, expecting to see Eiji lying on the ground, clutching his shattered leg. "Movement from the center. More power." Eiji smiled and picked up his books. He limped a little, as though he had bruised his right heel. Behind him, the ferrocrete slab had broken. Part of it still stood upright where Eiji had put it. The other part lay flat in the dirt behind him. "See what I mean?" Eiji had just stood there, arms crossed and smiling at her, looking very smug. Several of the assembled students applauded. Jessica had been suitably impressed. Even after short, skinny little freshman came out nobody bothered him. Not after that display. Of course, it was also just as likely that Eiji walked the way he did just because his door swung the way it did. Judging from the way he carried himself, upright, steady, and straight, however, Jessica decided her first guess had been the right one. Eiji greeted her the same way he greeted each of the three men gathered around the table, then sat down as the chef started his performance. Eiji paused in front of her. He handed her the disc and shook her hand. "Glad you could make it." Then he winked, and Jessica felt a little better now that a little bit of her friend was back. The last person he handed a disc to, oddly enough, was the chef, only he tossed it at him as he returned to his seat. Not even looking, the chef's tanned, unmarred left hand left a glittering, razor sharp cooking knife midair, snatching the disc and flipping it into his shirt pocket. He made a low sweeping grab, catching the knife by the handle before it could fall onto the sizzling grill. Eiji smiled slightly and settled down on the padded bench seating. "Alright, what we have here, gentlemen and lady, are the floor plans for the Artemis Omnitechnology corporate arcology here in New York. This will be the target we will be after." He slipped his disc into a small trideo projector and a 3D map of the arcology appeared over the grill. The chef slid five bowls through the image, and then poured hot from a soup pot, down the blade of one of his knives, into each bowl. He didn't spill a drop, though briefly the miniature arcology grew a little more solid looking as the steaming soup passed through its projected image. Flashing, a little red light in the middle of a giant blue anthill, blinked. "This is the bioengineering lab. This is where we have to get. We're looking for paper files. They'll likely be in a safe." The chef nearly cut off his own fingers. On the far side of the table, near Eiji, the short, wiry Hispanic man shook his head, staring at Eiji. "You're crazy, man. That place is a fortress." He leaned back against the bench, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He fiddled with the gold cross hanging from his left ear and scratched at the stubble growing around his chin. His golden cybereyes scanned the small gathering. "An army couldn't bust in there, let alone just us." There were murmurs of assent around the table, except from the chef, who managed to get his whirling knives back under control. Eiji waited, silent, staring at them. "You all agreed to come here and you accepted my money. If any of you want to leave, you can try to do so now." Everyone suddenly found the flashing blades dancing in the air very interesting. "Miguel, I'm sure all of us are aware of the difficulties in assaulting a place like the Artemis Arcology. However, there are also flaws in the defence of the place that a small group that works quickly and quietly can exploit." Eiji smiled and looked up at Jessica through a cloud of cooking wine steam. "Especially when they have help from the inside." He rose. "Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to Miss Jessica Bradley. She is both the principal beneficiary of our actions and the key to getting us into, and out of the arcology unnoticed. Jessica suddenly felt all eyes on her. "Umm... hi." Her cheeks felt hot. She reached for her water and took a long sip. She had no idea how to begin. "Wonderful." The youngish kid sitting between the gigantic man on her right and the Hispanic guy to Eiji's left shook his head. He stared at her through a pair of dark wraparounds that disappeared into his tangle of dyed black curls. "What the hell is she going to do for us?" Jessica stared at him over the rim of her glass. If not for the terrible hair color Eiji smiled. "Lots of things, actually, Matt. Ms. Bradley happens to run security there." "Oh. Sorry..." Matt blushed, looking like a chastised high school student for all his steel jewelry and fingerless leather gloves. "Umm... so what are we going to do?" Jessica found it hard to make eye contact with anyone at the table. She stared into her teacup, muttering over it. "Actually, I just monitor the security for the bioengineering systems. It's not really that big a deal." The only visible response from Matt was the sudden appearance of two arched eyebrows over his glasses. Eiji covered his mouth to supress a bark of laughter. "Well, Jessica? Do you think it would be possible for you to follow our progress online and temporarily suppress the local security?" He gestured to the others as plates of steaming beef teriyaki and fried rice appeared before them. "I think we can handle anything alive that Artemis sends our way if you buy us time from the net." To Jessica's surprise, he actually speared a piece of beef on his fork and put it in his mouth. Eiji smiled at her, but it was a guarded smile. Something you put on for an interview, not something you gave to a friend. "If protecting bionengineering is no big deal, then I think you should have no problem opening doors and locking out cameras for us." The walking tank sitting next to her had been silently eating the entire time, one weathered paw gripping his fork and the other resting under the table on the butt of his gun. "That's all well and good, Takeda, but you have managed to avoid the real issue." He put his fork down and folded his hands in front of his face, leaning on his elbows. "What business do you have breaking into a biomedical research facility anyway? You're asking us to trust our lives to the lady, whom we have never met. For what?" Eiji shook his head. "Everything you want to know is on those discs. I'm just here to know whether or not you want in. How about it, David?" The giant only arched an eyebrow. "You'll have to give me more than that." The other two men fell silent. The chef kept cooking, filling the air with the smell of peanut oil, soy sauce, and sizzling chicken. Eiji met his electric blue gaze and they sat, staring at each other through the pungent, meaty smoke that rose from the grill. "You're helping the lady discover what happened to her child." Eiji didn't move. Jessica looked up at David. His great brows furrowed, and he turned to her and nodded slowly, extending a hand that enveloped hers in its rough folds when she shook it. "If that is the case, then I find your offer of one quarter million United States dollars in certified credit acceptable, Takeda." David looked at his two companions. "Do you agree?" Matt and Miguel nodded. So did the chef. His knives had yet to slow down, let alone stop. Eiji smiled that humorless smile and nodded. "Great. Now that I know you're all in, I can make formal introductions. "Jessica, this is a long time associate of mine, David Thorne." Eiji took another bite, washing it down with tea. His expression stayed bland, despite the fact that Jessica knew he had to be ready to puke at any minute. "These are his partners, Matthew Callahan and Miguel Ortiz." The two men nodded in her direction. Matt was watching her over a cup of tea and Miguel saluted her with his fork. Jessica had no idea what to do in this situation. She had never thought she'd be in this kind of a situation before. "Um... Jessica Bradley. Nice to meet all of you?" Her dinner, which she had hardly touched, suddenly looked very interesting. David turned to her and nodded his head, extending his hand. She took it, and he raised it to his face, brushing it lightly with his lips. "It's an honor and a pleasure to work with you, Miss Bradley. I assure you my associates and I will endeavor to bring you that which you require to find the child that has been stolen from you." He clasped her hand. Jessica could feel the armored scales woven between the layers of his gloves. His hands were hot, with the slightest touch of tremor to them. Jessica had seen a trid program when she was in college about cyberware, and with her own she recalled it perfectly. One of the side effects of heavy use of cybernetic implants was a drastically increased rate of metabolism. "You have my word on that." David smiled, looking nearly human. Jessica looked down at his plate. It was full. Steaming chicken lay out on a bed off fried rice, surrounded by seared vegetables. Everyone else's food had gone cold. "And there's one more." Eiji smiled a real smile this time. "Though I think you know him already." He looked up at the chef, who had put his knives away and removed his hat. Next his hair came off, then his mustache. The fake cheekbones peeled away, as did the prosthetic high bridged nose. Finally, Shinji took a wet towel and wiped the dark makeup from his face. "Hello, Jessie-chan." Shinji smiled and bowed slightly. Jessica's jaw dropped. "Uh..." She stared at him as he wiped away the last traces of his disguise. "Hi." What other surprises could they spring on her? Jessica caught the brief exchange of glances between Eiji and Shinji. It was just a brief look, but she caught the twitch of Eiji's lips and the slight dilation of his heartmate's pupils and smiled herself. At least that explained one thing that had puzzled her. Nobody who knew him ever passed up a chance to sample Shinji's cooking. Either David was totally oblivious to the minutia that Jessica was able to pick up on or he was polite enough not to mention it. "Well, Takeda, now that we're all acquainted, I believe we can set a date for this proceeding to occur, can we not?" Eiji nodded. "I already have. How does Saturday night sound? Around 4:30 in the morning." "I like that idea." David cleaned off his plate again. "Catch security at its weakest point." "Right." Eiji got up and closed up his briefcase. "I assume that you will all make the appropriate preparations. That will be all for now, gentlemen." He adjusted his coat and headed for the exit. Shinji followed. As he passed Jessica noticed him crooking his finger at her. She stood up, trying not to look hurried, and waved goodnight to the remaining men. She shrugged on her long coat and jogged after Shinji, slipping out as he slid the door shut. * As soon as they got into the raucous safety of Bishonen's, Eiji threw off his jacket and tie, flinging them onto the couch in the back room where they entered and flounced onto the soft cushions. "God, I hate having to do that!" He smiled up at Shinji and Jessica and beckoned them both over, hugging them tightly around their necks. Shinji he kissed lightly on the cheek. "You guys were great there! Especially you, Jessie. Not bad for a first time, eh dear?" Shinji blushed furiously and nodded. "I hope you are not upset?" He sat on the arm of the couch, putting an arm on Eiji's left shoulder. "We have kept this from you for... awhile now." He sat down next to Eiji and stared at her, waiting for an answer. Jessica went to reply but paused. She wanted to say everything was fine, and nothing was wrong at all, but she found herself unable to do it. She wasn't sure what she thought anymore. She blinked and straightened, chewing slowly on her lower lip. Memories flashed through her mind of more normal times. For an instant, Eiji was eighteen again, staring up at her in shock while a sixteen year old Shinji tried to hide under the blankets. The same people that periodically flunked out of classes for missing too many exams. Jessica sighed and slumped against the wall. "You want the truth or a comfortable lie?" She wanted to tell them this was just something else they did, and that it didn't bother her in the slightest, but she had seen the news. People like that killed. And they died too. How many silhouettes on the sidewalk wound up there because of the same two innocent, startled lovers she had interrupted years ago? Eiji took a deep breath and let it out slowly, ruffling his forelocks. "We're big boys, Jessie. We can handle the truth." He looked over at Shinji and took his hand, holding it in his lap. Both of them turned back to her, silently expecting. She turned and thumped her forehead against the old wallpaper. This close, the soft, faded pink triangles blurred against the green background and she could smell the dry, earthy smell of the aged drywall. "I don't know, Eiji. That's the truth. I just don't know what the hell to think anymore." Part of her was impressed. Eiji was living a pop culture legend. Trids portrayed mailed, sword wielding cyber-knights, straight shooting urban cowboys and lightning fast cybernauts against the evil, all powerful megacorps. People like that really existed, it seemed. Eiji and his associats were living proof of that. Another part of her was terrified. People died in that business. Many of them were innocents who just got caught in the crossfire. Jessica had never actually met a real cyber-knight before, but she doubted they were all the media made them out to be. Eiji put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around. His face was sad. "I'm sorry, Jessie. I wish I could have told you... but I couldn't. There was just too much at stake. I wanted to stay your friend, but if you knew what I did and got hurt..." His voice broke into a squeak and trailed off. Eiji took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at her. His eyes were moist. "Oh, shut up, Eiji!" Jessica bit her lip and laughed. Staying angry at Eiji was impossible. Especially when he was right. She wasn't even sure she could handle the upcoming task now, and she had the cutting edge on her side. Had he told her the whole truth when they first met, it was likely she would never have survived to graduate. "It's alright. I'm a big girl, and I can handle the truth." Jessica smiled at him and found the expression returned with enthusiasm. "But I do have one question for you." Eiji hugged her, wrapping his arms around the small of her back and patting her between the shoulder blades. "What's that, Jessie?" That close to her ear, Jessica noticed the strain in Eiji's voice. The smooth, harmonic quality was just a little bit wrong. Slightly flat. Eiji was still trying to deal with her sudden introduction to his private way of life. Jessica suppressed a laugh and stepped away from Eiji, regarding him seriously. "Don't we have some kind of planning to do?" Eiji's smile was one of relief. Whenever Eiji really smiled, his eyes narrowed to the point of closing, and tiny crow's feet creased the corners of his eyes. "Yeah. Come on, Jessie. There are a few things I'm going to have to show you." * * * Adam was already on his fifth set of clothes in the past two months. A matched set, shorts and sleeveless top, both matte black synthetic material. The Artemis Omnitechnology company logo adorned the left breast, along with a tiny barcode that encoded his security number. Holes had to be cut in all his pants to accomodate the fuzzy little tail that sprouted from his back side. Marissa slipped the disc into the recorder and watched Adam through the one way glass. He sat in the middle of the room, surrounded in blocks of different shapes. He picked them up in his small hands, occasionally putting one in his muzzle. "Experiment log, 3 September, 2046. Adam is growing at a phenomenal rate. Even though he's barely eight months old, he's already walking, and his vocabulary grows every day. His accelerated growth curve appears to be working about right." Marissa checked her notes. Adam picked up a square block in one paw and stood up. He ran to a low shelf and pulled off a tray with different shaped slots in it for the blocks. He plopped down and stared intently at it for a few seconds. Behind him, his short tail swished slowly back and forth. Then he got up, carried the tray back to the middle of the room, and put all the blocks in their respective slots. "He seems to be growing about five times faster than a human being, which is about eighty percent of what we expected for the first three years." Adam laughed and clapped his hands together. "Mentally, as well as physically." Marissa smiled to herself and waved through the glass. Every day for an hour she put Adam in a small observation room crammed full of all manner of toys. Jenner had covered all the bases. There were stuffed animals, which didn't last long around him when he started teething, blocks, toy cars, puzzles, games, and even a child's trideo projector. He was literally growing up right in front of her. Every day, he seemed to pick up something new. It had come as a tremendous relief when Adam stopped using diapers after only three months. Fur was a pain to keep clean. "Mama, I got it!" Adam jumped off the floor. "I got it, look!" He turned and looked at the glass that concealed her presence. He paused and cocked his head slightly to one side. His ears straightened, pricked forwards. His soft brown eyes scanned the reflective surface, and his tiny black nose quivered as he scented the air. Adam smiled. It had taken Marissa weeks to figure out what he was doing when his muzzle parted and his ears folded back against his skull. He let out a little yip of laughter and ran for the glass on his sturdy little legs. Stopping in front of it, he held the tray and blocks up to the mirror. "Look Mama, I did it!" Marissa involuntarily took a step back. She tried to find her voice, failing to come up with anything more than a whisper. "Shit." Adam didn't look at the glass. He looked through it. "Lookit, Mama, look!" Adam's hips shook as his tail whipped furiously back and forth through the hole in the back of his black shorts. "My God. He knows I'm here." That was impossible. The one way glass couldn't be seen through from that side of the room, and there was no air exchange between the soundproof chambers for him to catch her scent. Marissa turned in a circle, scanning every centimeter with her high grade cybereyes. How did he do that? Marissa backed up a step involuntarily, bumping into the window behind her. She caught herself, and then looked back up. The door. Leading from her office to the observation lounge, anyone passing through the door would see the window. Marissa turned and looked back through the window again, backing up until she reached the door. Suddenly, she remembered she was still recording. "Adam's recall is amazing. He seems to have an excellent memory, and a capacity for reasoning far beyond our best expectations." She was about to continue, when blocks flew across the limited field of vision the window provided. Adam was sobbing when she threw open the door to the observation room and ran in. He had thrown the tray across the room, knocking over the trideo projector. Marissa knelt beside him and scooped him up in her arms, hugging him close to her chest. "It's alright, honey, I'm here." Adam hid his face in her shoulder, his tears wetting her lab coat. Marissa snuggled him tightly, stroking his head fur gently with her fingers. "You didn't look!" Adam looked up at her with wet eyes. His ears were pressed flat against his head, and his tail drooped, hiding between his legs. "You didn't look." "I'm sorry, honey." She stroked his cheek gently, brushing away tears with her forefinger. "I'm very proud of you, Adam. You're very, very smart!" She smiled, forcing a light tone into her voice even as her larynx wrapped itself around her windpipe. She kissed his forehead, brushing her lips against the soft fuzz between his ears. "I looked, Adam. I did. See?" Marissa pointed up at the glass. From this side, it was just a mirror built into the wall. "Mama saw you through there." Adam sniffed and wiped his nose on the hem of his black vest. "I know." He stood on her knees and licked her cheek. "Ice cream now?" Marissa smiled and stood. Adam fidgeted in her arms until she put him down. "Alright, honey. Ice cream sounds good." * * * Jenner caught up to her as she was heading for her car. "Marissa, wait a minute!" She turned around. Jenner stood in the doorway, supporting himself on the wall with one hand and clasping a respirator to his face with another. He slumped, shoulders rounded and panting. "Could you come back inside? I need to talk with you for a moment." Her senior partner stood, breathing shallowly, and backed between the sliding glass doors. Marissa joined him in the small lobby. Jenner slumped in a blue cloth covered couch, breathing deeply of the filtered air. His breather lay on his lap, and tiny flecks of blood decorated his lips. He must have been following her for quite awhile. "What is it? I was about to go back to the hotel and get some sleep for tomorrow. I've been working late the past few days. What's up?" Marissa sat down in a brown plastic chair and watched him carefully, taking in every detail of his person and every nuance of movement. She leaned back in the seat, and folded one leg over the other. Matthew Jenner was agitated. That much was obvious. In the years she had worked with him, Marissa had learned to recognize the cues. They were small things. The way his fingers drummed lightly on the arm of the couch, how he repeatedly crossed and uncrossed his legs, and how he breathed: slow and deep, like he was meditating. But most of all, it was his eyes. Those brilliant, ice blue orbs locked onto her face and held her attention. Jenner was fond of eye contact. He could stare down the most hardened of cyber knights. Part of it was the way he looked at someone. Instead of meeting gazes evenly, Jenner would stare at one eye, or maybe a person's ear. The shift in focus was slight, but on a subconcious level, it could be very unnerving. At the moment, Marissa's left ear found itself the subject of Jenner's scrutiny. Jenner had the kind of gaze you could feel. "It's about your reports, Marissa. They're beginning to disturb me." Marissa straightened in her seat. She uncrossed her legs and sat up. For a moment, her inky black eyes met his stellar blue ones. "What about them? Adam is doing just fine. He's fulfilling our every expectation." Marissa's stomach tightened. Jenner had warned her over and over about getting too closely involved with the experiment. She knew what was coming. "It's not the experiment I'm worried about, Marissa. It's you." Jenner stopped moving. He leaned back in his chair and planted both feet on the floor, and steepled his fingers in front of his nose. "The way your reports are going, you seem to be losing your objectivity. You are becoming attached to Adam." His eyes narrowed and locked onto the middle of her forehead. He took a long, slow breath, holding it in his lungs. "That's very dangerous, epecially now. Is there a problem here, Marissa?" Marissa blinked, escaping his eyes for an instant. "No. There's no problem. I don't know what you're talking about, Matt." She could have told him the truth. Lying was more convenient. Marissa didn't know who was funding this project. Jenner was always the one who spoke to the higher ups. She had always been happier in the lab than the boardroom. Jenner rolled his eyes. "Don't play me for a fool, Marissa. You're not very good at it. It started slowly, but more and more, you anthropomorphize our subject." When Marissa opened her mouth to speak, Jenner cut her off with a wave. "I've seen better work from first year graduates." "Damn you!" Marissa pushed herself to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at Jenner. "Listen to yourself! What do you think we created here, some kind of animal? Is that all you think he is?" She glared at him. Her hands were balled tightly into fists, and her nails dug into her palms. "Adam's the most intelligent child I have ever seen." "Training." "Bullshit! If you've read anything I've sent, you know that's not true! I've been the one raising Adam ever since we delivered him. What the hell do you know about him except for what I've told you? Of course I'm anthropomorphizing! Adam grows more and more every day. Humanity is more than what genes you have, Doctor." Her throat raw from shouting in the dry air, Marissa took her respirator and jammed it over her head. She stormed for the door, pausing in the entrance when Jenner called out to her. "What?" "So what's next? Will you start breastfeeding him?" Jenner stood and stared at her. Marissa paused in the doorway. That stung. She whirled on Jenner, mouth open for a blistering retort. When she got around to face him, she found she was missing one. Jenner folded his arms across his chest. "Do you know why we are running this experiment, Marissa? Have you ever taken the time to think on the reason human beings would build something that had the potential to surpass us in every way, both physical and mental?" She hadn't. When she had recieved the first call from Jenner during the first year of the project, it had been a dream come true. She had jumped at the chance to work with one of the most famous men in the field. Over the years, Marissa had thrown herself into her work so hard that the thought had never even entered her mind. Jenner regarded her with a smirk and shifted his weight to his right foot, leaning back a few centimeters. "I didn't think so." He shook his head. "Know this, Marissa. I asked you to join the project because you were one of the best and brightest. We were going into the unknown, and you managed to come through it successfully. The hard part is over." His eyes narrowed, and he took half a step forward. The wind picked up outside and a stray gust blew the wet air inside. It caught Jenner in the chest and doubled him over in a fit of coughing. He covered his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. After a few seconds, he pulled it back bloody. "Technically I don't need you anymore." Marissa took a step back, stunned. Jenner's words stuck in her like a knife. How stupid had she been? She lowered her eyes. Right now she wanted to look anywhere but Matt Jenner's blood spattered face. She felt used, and now he was going to throw her away. She had been the one to make his project work. It had been her hours in the lab, not his, that had ultimately been the answer to their problems. And he didn't need her anymore. Violation turned to anger. She looked up, staring straight at him with her abyssal eyes. "So why don't you fire me, then?" She stepped forward. The door closed. Jenner wiped his mouth. "Because I can't. You know more about this project than anyone in the world... except me. We answer to someone else, you and I. Someone that would like to keep any risk of information leak to a minimum." He straightened and took off his jacket, regarding the bloodstained sleeve critically. "Remember that, Marissa." He turned on his heel and stalked off down the hall, turning a corner and disappearing. Marissa slumped against the wall. Clenching a fist, she beat at the impassive beige surface. Her thoughts turned to Adam. She recalled the soft texture of his fur under her fingers and his dark, tusting eyes. What had she gotten him into? Chapter 6: Jessica's portable phone rang. It was time to get started. Everything was in place, waiting to be activated. The camera was down. Fooling it had been simple enough. Eiji's little trick had worked. Planting the virus was easy enough. That portion of the system was easily accessible to her. A simple feedback loop kept recording the same image of an empty office over and over again. Anyone monitoring the security camera wouldn't see anything more than an empty, windowless office all night long. She shut the door and reached into her bag. She set her old .45 on the desk next to her terminal and set the two portable door stops against the door on the floor and the ceiling. The powerful magnets activated, firmly securing the entrance. According to Eiji, the two small black rectangles with the blinking green lights would stop anyone from opening the door without breaking it down. Jessica pulled the plain office chair away from the desk and sat down with her cyberdeck in her lap and scanned the scratched resin surface. The terminal sat in the near right corner, a plain gray screen embedded in desk. Leftovers from her life littered the workspace. A cyberdeck user had little use for a table top. A small holograph of her parents rested next to the terminal screen. Her father smiled up at her, his hazel eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. He hugged his wife close. Her long blond hair mingled with his dark locks and her left hand was raised in a wave. Jessica had taken that picture the summer before she started college. Her parents had surprised her with a trip west, to Yosemite. A week spent in clean air, under a blue, cloudless sky. It was the last thing her parents had ever given her. Of all the junk on her desk - used coffee cups, random, brightly colored data chips, and an assortment of little plastic monkeys that had been a Christmas present from Shinji, that one battered old picture made her stop. Jessica picked it up, cradling the base in the palm of her left hand. After she went through with this, her life was over. Eiji had warned her of that. "Are you still sure you want to do this, Jessie?" he had asked. "There's still time to back out. The danger's mostly past, for now." Eiji had sat her down and taken both her hands in his own, only two short nights ago. Bishonen's doors didn't open that day. The patrons were told Eiji was out of town, visiting his family. None of them knew that Eiji's family were quite happy to know their eldest son from a distance, as if kilometers hid some uncomfortable truths about the heir to the name. "I'm sure." She had been, too. Together, they would all make Artemis pay for using her life. Eiji had not been convinced. "Jessie, you're my best friend, and I love you. I don't want you to get hurt. If you decide to keep going, we're all in danger, especially you." He had sighed. She remembered that his eyes and cheeks sparkled in the dimmed club lights, though he wore no makeup that night. "After this, we're all going to be on the run. I don't think we'll even be able to stay in New York anymore... at least for awhile. It just won't be safe enough." "This will end your life, Jessica-chan." Shinji hadn't cried, but he wore his concern in other ways. The way he stood, straight up and pacing, without his customary easy glide, and the way he popped each knuckle of each finger one by one by pressing it to his palm with his thumb. "You'll never be able to go back to Artemis. You'll never get your job back, and if you ever come near the company again, you'll be killed." Shinji was in full agreement with his other half. Despite all their plans, nothing would proceed unless Jessica was absolutely sure she wanted to do it. "My life ended when that bitch got me to sign it away to the company." Jessica straighened in her chair and set down the picture of her parents. That part of her life was over. As she picked up the plug and combed back her long hair, tying it back into a ponytail, her heart raced. Once she logged in, that would be it. Strangely, she found herself calm. She locked the plug into her datajack and powered up the cyberdeck. As the world went digital and slowly faded out, a tiny knot that had tied itself inside her undid and vanished. The corporation had violated her... used her body and left her in the shadows, hoping she'd go away and forget what they did. Jessica had a better memory they thought. * The Artemis network was supposed to be a highly customized system that displayed all functions in the terms of its sculpted virtual environment. It wasn't. When the system had first gone to the virtual format in 2030, some genius had decided that it would be a good idea to make the virtual system look just like the real arcology. That was what happened when a company sold contracts to the lowest bidder. Jessica had heard of systems in some smaller firms that had been radically sculpted to fit one theme or another. Avalon Development had turned their system into a gothic castle, complete with knights and gargoyles that came to life to ward off intruders. Artemis Omnitech just copied their own building. Jessica's icon came online standing in an empty room. She opened the door and headed for the elevators. At least the network was easy to navigate. Jessica headed for the parking garage where Eiji and the rest of the team was waiting. Her job was pretty basic. All she had to do was suppress the electronic observation devices wherever her teammates were and set up a copy of the same data loop that was fooling the security camera in her own office. And, if someone actually came around to check on things personally, it was Jessica's job to suppress him too... in a more permanent fashion. She scanned her cyberdeck's online memory for the tenth time since yesterday. All the new programs were in place and running perfectly. She had no idea where Eiji got them from, and she probably didn't want to know. The control program for the security cameras watching the garage translated into a small security booth manned by a single guard. Looking over the icon's shoulder, she could make out the black Buick Ortiz had "borrowed" for the job. She called up her Chameleon utility. Her icon faded and turned transparent. The moment she opened the virtual glass door, there would be no turning back. Even now, she could still bail out. She had not done anything wrong yet. The instant she touched that door, however, she was no longer a security specialist working for Artemis Omnitech. She would be a data thief. The very kind of person the corporation paid her to stop. Jessica reached out and touched the door. The Chameleon worked. With little more than a faint tingle of feedback, she put her hand through the glass with no resistance. Jessica walked through the door. The security program wasn't very realistic. The soldier icon was blocky and generic. One of thousands throughout the Arcology, it lacked the vibrant, lifelike quality that signified a highly advanced program or a live cybernaut. She scanned it and readied the suppression routine. The program manifested as a blackjack in her right hand. The program did not react at all when she cocked back her virtual arm and struck it cleanly in the back of the head. The icon crumpled. It slumped onto the desk and lay still. Jessica smiled an electron grin. "Sweet dreams." Jessica looked through the camera. The car looked empty. "Hey, Jessie, you there?" Eiji's voice was a little broken up, but the phone connection to her deck worked. "Yeah, I'm here. Ready?" "Whenever you are." Eiji kissed his phone. The sucking sound echoed through her mind. Jessica stood in front of the control panel. It was a simple enough subsystem, only a few routines for directing network traffic and to let in people with the right passes. Faking one was no problem. Jessica searched the little node for the log file and downloaded the data into her cyberdeck. Once she found the list of all the ID numbers that had triggered the door that day, she chose one at random and fed it back into the control program, watching the monitors all the time. The door slid open. "Alright, Jessie, we're in business." Eiji was the first one out of the car. Through the camera's weak eye, his mottled gray camouflage was just a shadow flitting between the rows of parked cars until it escaped her view. By the time Jessica turned the camera back to the main garage to see the others, they were gone as well. Jessica switched cameras. From this one node, she had access to all the security cameras that watched this entry point. Eiji led the group down the short hallway and up a short ferrocrete staircase. Stopping at the gray metal door, he turned and looked back up at the camera. He wore a mirrored visor that wrapped around his eyes, and a black face mask. Aside from a black vest that bore a number of pockets, his entire body was dressed in the same gray urban camo as everyone else. "Are we clear on the other side?" Jessica checked. She found the data feed from the camera she was looking through and followed it. The glowing yellow conduit left the booth she was in. It disappeared behind another door. She approached the door and brought her cloak program back up. "Checking, hang on." Jessica approached the door and slipped through. The inside of this node looked just like the last one. Jessica shook her head. She couldn't believe this! It was no wonder Artemis relied so heavily upon human cybernauts to protect the individual departments' subsystems. She easily suppressed the camera control program and downloaded Eiji's virus. Yet another camera had fallen victim. Through its grainy, digital eye, Jessica saw the lone guard manning the small security post. Everything was in soft grayscales. He leaned back in a molded chair. His dark uniform and wavy black hair were rumpled and wild, as if he had been napping. He stretched, gaping up at the camera as he yawned, and put his booted feet up on the desk. Behind him, his shoulder holster hung on a white plastic hook. The black ceramic Browning automatic pistol was nestled snugly in its pouch. Jessica looked back to the other side of the door. Eiji lay on the stairs. Only the top of his head and the muzzle of his pistol poked above the ferrocrete landing. Pressed up against the doorjamb, David Thorne lurked. At the meeting, he had just been a large, scary man with too many cybernetics. Here, Jessica saw him for the first time. There were soldiers, and there were cyber-knights. David Thorne was one of the latter. He wore chain mail, similar to the kind that protected the warrior kings of centuries past, though the aerospace alloys that made up much smaller links provided enough stopping power to stop any vibrosword. A small power cell ran sensors woven throughout the suit itself. When they detected an incoming attack, the mesh would harden in just the right spot, becoming hard enough to deflect any blow or bullet. David wore such a suit. It stood out as a dull gray against his solid black battle dress uniform, protecting the vital areas of his body. In his left hand, a two edged vibrosword rested easily. His thumb hovered over a small switch. When depressed, the broadsword's blade would start to vibrate, moving so fast that the edges would seem to blur. In effect, the blade became a hypersonic saw, shearing through anything David chose to swing it at. A wire ran from the weapon's plain black pommel, up David's sleeve, and into the left arm of his wraparound visor. She had no idea what that was. "Jessie? You still there?" Eiji's soft voice had an edge to it tonight, as though he were talking through clenched teeth. He looked up at the camera and cocked his head toward the door. "Yeah. There's one guard in a booth on the other side of the door. I've killed the surveillance on him." She double checked to make sure. Eiji nodded and pointed to David. The cyber knight lowered into a combat stance, knees slightly bent, sword at the ready. He thumbed the switch on the vibroblade. The sword started to blur. Eiji raised an arm and pointed at the door. Shinji padded up the stairs. Jessica stole a peek at the guard. He didn't notice. He was staring at a flat screen. Whatever he was watching seemed to be more interesting than his job. "Eiji, he's watching a 2D. He doesn't notice." Eiji nodded at the camera and signaled with his index and middle fingers held up. Callahan and Ortiz, looking like twin spectres, lurked in the shadows. Dressed all in black, all she could see through the camera was a glint of light off visors and the silenced muzzles of rifles peeking out of the darkness. Shinji knelt in front of the door. David stood beside him. A pair of dots appeared on the door, flanking Shinji's head. He reached into a pocket of his vest and withdrew some kind of small electronic tool. It had a plastic card attached to it. "Jessie-chan," he asked, "can you open this door for me?" "Nope. This system is cameras only. If I opened the door, it'd alert the guard." "Alright. I'll crack it from here. Domo." Shinji waved his companions off with a flick of his wrist. He set a small case down in front of the door and examined it closely. On one side, there was a card reader. Jessica had used the thing before. You swiped your ID through it and the reader checked it against the Artemis database. And then it either opened or it didn't. Shinji opened his package up and carefully slid a small palmtop out. A broad gray ribbon cable ran from the back of the small computer to a plain gray card. He swiped it through the card reader. Shinji's fingers flew over the tiny keypad. "Cross your fingers, everyone." The red light that meant the door was still locked glowed brightly. Through her camera's eye view, all Jessica saw as an angry white dot against the black of the card reader. Shinji shifted his weight, putting both feet beneath him, ready to dive for cover if need be. Slowly, the lights climbed, from the red on the bottom, to the green at the top. The door was unlocked. Through her comlink, Jessica heard Shinji let out a deep breath. He held up his left hand with three fingers raised. First his middle finger folded at the knuckle. Then his index finger followed. As Shinji's thumb completed his fist, David spun into the doorway and set his shoulder against it, shoving hard. Jessica turned her attention to the other camera. The guard had just noticed a set of indicator lights blinking on his console when the metal door swung open. He barely had time to put his feet on the ground and get halfway out of his seat when David had him pressed up against the rear wall of the security booth with a forearm at his throat. Stunned, Jessica replayed the clip from her deck's memory. She hadn't even seen the cyber-knight move. One by one, the others entered, Shinji first, then Eiji, Ortiz, and Callahan. Still holding the guard against the wall, David turned to Eiji and said something. Jessica heard nothing. Their comlinks must have been off. Eiji shook his head and pointed from the guard to the console and back. His mask hid any expression, but the security guard was wide eyed. His mouth moved rapidly and he kept shaking his head back and forth. Eiji leveled his pistol at the guard. The man froze, and Jessica noticed the dark stain spreading down the front of his pants. Before Eiji could squeeze the trigger, Shinji stepped in front of him, arms spread. He pushed Eiji's gun aside and jabbed his gloved index finger into Eiji's chest. Eiji shifted his weight to his right leg and tapped his left foot on the floor. He folded his arms and cocked his head. Ortiz and Callahan kept their rifles trained on the guard, and David turned his head to see what was going on. The security guard must have thought he had a chance. Wide-eyed with fear, he kicked out, driving one booted foot into David's groin. The cyber-knight apparently had some real parts left. He dropped his sword and the guard, staggering back a few steps with his mouth hanging open. The guard lunged for the hook on the wall where his gun hung. Eiji pushed Shinji aside as the guard grabbed his pistol. Before he could draw it from its holster, Eiji sighted him and fired twice before anyone had a chance to react. The first bullet caught the guard in the chest, and the second one hit between the eyes. He straightened and turned to look at Eiji. He blinked as a trickle of blood ran down his forehead, then collapsed against the wall with a sigh. Had Jessica not been watching through her camera, she might have puked. As it was, she watched Eiji turn and say something to the others. All of them nodded, except Shinji. "We're clear, Jessie." Eiji's voice crackled over the comlink again as he hid the guard's body under the security desk. His normally gentle voice had a hard edge to it, as though he spoke through clenched teeth. "Make sure the elevator's clear, then head for bionengineering. You'll have two minutes to take out the lab's security." He looked up at the camera and nodded once. Then his voice cut out and Jessica was alone in silence again. * Unlike the coldly generic Arcology system, Bioengineering's reality template gleamed in the digital lighting. The security desk with its androgynous attendant was gone, replaced by a shimmering code gate guarded on either side by a living caducaeus. The snake icons coiled around their staves, observing her with flat black eyes. Their animation was superb. Under their glossy green scales, muscles pulsed and quivered with each sinuous, lifelike movement. These were no simple utility programs, carbon copied for the same task in a hundred places throughout the Arcology. These custom built attack programs were designed to trap an intruding cybernaut and kill him by sending lethal biofeedback levels directly into his brain. All four of them turned their broad, triangular heads towards her. "Identification, please." Their raspy, sibilant voices had no echoes. Jessica retrieved her normal user login. It showed up as a card which she swiped through the card reader against the gate. Her bioscanner opened a display, hovering in the air. Her pulse and adrenaline levels were becoming elevated. Every cyberdeck had its own bioscanners so it could warn the cybernaut when his physical body was in danger. This one just happened to be pointing out the obvious. She closed the monitor as the red light on the ID check went green and the code gate's double doors slid apart, beckoning her in. "Identification checks out. Good evening, user Jessica Bradley." The four serpents nodded their acknowledgement of her presence and retreated to rest around their staves. "You may enter." Jessica nodded to each of them, prayed she would be able to do what she had to, and stepped through. Inside, Bioengineering was a hospital. An army of doctors and nurses scurried about, constantly maintaining the massive system's integrity. Lurking somewhere in here was another cybernaut. Eiji and his team could never get into the lab if someone else was controlling the system and all its security and communication measures. The problem was that Jessica had no idea who it might be. Artemis changed their shifts constantly and secretly. It helped minimize the chance that one specific cybernaut might be compromised. She had to find him before Eiji got to the doors, or it would mean a premature end to their night. Jessica headed for the node index. The reality template protrayed it as a large, round information desk manned by a pair of maintenance programs. She approached the two blond icons and cleared her throat. One of them looked up, scanning her. "Welcome to Bionengineering, verified user. How may I assist you today?" "I'm looking for someone. I need to know who's currently on security detail for this subsystem." Jessica crossed her fingers. This was risky. If he was watching, the security man might catch her here and now. "OK. User Foster, Chris is currently running security for this system." The program looked up at her. "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" Jessica shook her head. "No thanks." She turned to leave. As soon as she was away from the information desk, the two attendants looked back to their work. As long as nobody needed anything from them, they automatically went into a systems diagnostic and scanning mode. That way if they detected anything wrong they could alert the cybernaut on duty. Jessica cloaked herself again, draping the program about her icon. The attendants didn't notice her as she walked through the desk. Jessica scanned the inside of the desk for a searching utility. She needed to find Acid Man quickly. The kid was good, and Jessica wanted to take him out fast, and without hurting him physically. Jessica had never really liked him much. He was good, but he had an ego problem. Jessica went through her list of attack programs and selected a deck blaster. It would knock someone offline and fry his cyberdeck, leaving the user unconcious, but he'd be alright in the morning. The system scanner, as it turned out, was more obvious than she thought it would be. After vainly searching the information desk twice, she looked up in frustration. Beside the elevators was a large display of the system's reality template. The name "Chris Foster" was prominently displayed as a blinking green dot under the heading "You are Here." Jessica sighed. "Sure. Taunt me why don't you," she muttered. Acid Man was currently active, but hadn't moved from his position in hours. Jessica headed for the stairs. He wouldn't notice a cloaked user coming up the backup data path, but if she took an elevator, her cloak would be pointless. In cyberspace, elevators did not carry nothing. When Jessica found Foster, he was sitting in the security node, scanning the code gates for signs of forced entry. She watched him from the door. The kid had his feet up on the desk, his black Seattle Fury shirt was rumpled, and his eyes were half lidded. Jessica drew her deck blaster program and activated the virus. Keeping her cloak tight, she rose and stepped into the room. She approached him. In her hand, the blaster appeared as a black, plastic stunner. Blue lightning arced between the two electrodes. The icon even gave off the scent of ionized air. This was a powerful one. Jessica was halfway into the room when Foster spun his chair around. He had his own attack virus in his hands. This one was a massive broadsword, like the one David was using. He brat's face was twisted in a smirk. "You can come out now. I know where you are." She stopped and dropped her cloak, holding her blaster out in front of her. Foster laughed. "Oooh, nice one you got there." He rose, leaning the flat of his sword against his shoulder. "Where'd you get it, Jess? You couldn't have written it yourself." He shook his head and stepped towards her. "I can't believe you were so sloppy. You used your own access code. I knew you were here the instant you walked into the node." He pointed the sword at her and dropped into a combat crouch. "Tell you what, because I work with you, I'll make you a deal. You can go away and I'll forget this ever happened." Acid Man's program was as real as hers was, and that sword gleamed in the lighting. Jessica shook her head. If she quit now, the rest of her teammates would never make it out of the Arcology alive. She pointed the blaster at him and pressed the trigger. Lightning leaped from the prongs, arcing towards Foster's icon. The reality template translated warring viruses and countermeasures into real time combat between the cybernauts. Acid Man ducked his head and dove. The bolt of electricity splashed against the wall. The scorch mark blackened, then started to fade as the system repaired the damaged data. "Not bad, for an amateur." He kicked to his feet and lunged at her. Jessica had to backpeadal to avoid his blade. She backed out of his reach and hit the wall. Jessica brought her blaster around and fired again. This time, Foster was ready. He jumped the bolt and landed on his desk. The kid's evasion countermeasures were good. Jessica was going to have to outsmart him. Foster charged, swinging his sword in a low arc. Jessica dove to her left. The blade bit deep into the wall, and the structure recoiled from it, leaving behind a deep, burning gash. Jessica's eyes went wide. A scan confirmed her fears. That wasn't a deck blaster. Foster's program was a killer. It sent lethal biofeedback through the deck when it hit. He was trying to kill her with her own deck. Jessica aimed and fired again. Foster dodged easily, leaping the blast. As he fell, he pointed his sword at her chest. He was going to land on her, blade first. As her mnemonic booster kicked in with an idea, everything seemed to slow down. Foster was drifting through the air now. His sword crept towards her as her enhanced mind raced for the answer to her problem. It was something she had seen in an industry update Dave had showed her. She recalled it perfectly now, though she had only given it a cursory reading. The screens appeared in front of her as Foster floated towards her. The article mentioned that a cybernaut could use his own icon as an attack virus by merging the program with a pre-existing virus. The article warned that the attack virus would likely also affect the cybernaut, though its effect would be reduced. The poor opponent, however, would find the attack running at full strength. It was worth a try. Jessica's mind raced to keep up with her cyberdeck as the blaster merged with her icon. As it sank into her chest, she felt the lightning surge through her body. It was trapped, just waiting for something to ground through. Her mnemonic booster shut down. Foster's blade sped up, and his lips pulled back in a sneer of victory. Jessica drew her knees to her chest. Her body was enveloped in lightning. As she kicked out, his grin melted and his eyes went wide. "What the..." Foster never got to finish. Jessica's heels caught him in the chest. The sword flew from his hand. Electricity raced into his body. The circuit was completed, and the blaster program kicked in. Jessica's alarms went wild as all her status monitors leaped off the scale. Her icon's body went limp. She couldn't move, and everything was going black as her deck ran an emergency logoff. The last thing she saw before sensory whiteout was Foster's cooked icon slowly dissipating into its component bits. * Jessica opened her eyes slowly and blinked a few times to get rid of the purple lights dancing in front of her. She was staring at the ceiling of her office. She groaned and rolled over, getting her hands and knees underneath her. She tried to stand, but as she rose, the floor seemed to dip underneath her. The room went dark, and Jessica had to lean against the wall to remain upright. Slowly, the head rush faded, leaving her with a vague ache throughout her body. The jolt from the blaster had thrown her out of her chair and into the corner of the room. She checked her deck and winced. All the indicators had gone red and the plastic case was warm to the touch. It was going to be awhile before it had cooled back down to safe levels and longer before she could fix it totally. At least she could be fairly certain Foster was worse off than she was. Jessica unplugged her phone from the deck. It had managed to avoid most of the shock,and was still working. "Eiji? This is Jessica. Can you hear me?" Eiji's voice was much clearer. "I'm here, Jessie. What's happened? Are we clear to come in?" Jessica nodded. "I took out the security guy, and I think I crashed the network too. You ought to have a couple minutes before it comes back online." Eiji's sigh of relief roared out of the reciever, making her cringe and hold the phone away from her head. "Are you alright?" She sat back down at her desk. "I will be. Do you need me for anything else?" Her head was throbbing at the temples, and her left ear was ringing from Eiji's breath across his headset comlink. "I don't think so, Jessie. We can take care of things from here. Just leave according to plan. We'll meet up in an hour, so just take it easy until then. See you soon!" Jessica slumped in her chair and groaned. Everything was hurting. She wanted to stop fighting and let herself pass out, but she didn't want to die in her sleep just yet. She pushed herself slowly away from her desk and deactivated the door stopper. She stuffed it into her bag and set the self destruct on the camera suppressor for five hours. By the time security changed shifts and checked the data from the cameras, she would be with Eiji and Shinji on the way to Washington. She didn't know what would happen when they arrived. For that she'd have to wait and see. Jessica shut her office door behind her for the last time. She straightened, pulling back her hair and squaring her shoulders. Keeping her eyes straight ahead and walking slow to keep from stumbling, she made her way to the elevator. As the doors shut behind her, she turned and looked over her shoulder at what had been her dream life. She finally had success, money, and all the things she used to daydream about when she was processing chips for subsistence wages. "Dream's over, Jess," she told herself. "Time to wake up." * Jessica's internal chronometer told her it was 2:30 AM. Eiji was half an hour late. She leaned against the grimy ferrocrete tiles that lined the Christopher Street subway station and wiped the black film off her wraparound polarizing visor with a gloved hand. This late at night, she hated subways even more. Enshrouded in her black long coat, she lurked in one corner of the platform underneath an old, peeling ad for some play about the 1996 New York Yankees. Passersby largely ignored her. A hooker didn't wear a full length coat and cover her face, and a street dweller didn't own a respirator or powered smart glasses. The trains came and went. Every five minutes, fewer and fewer people got out of each metal car. Ten trains later, the doors opened and shut uselessly. Nobody got off, and nobody got on. Across the platform, a pair of ragged street kids watched her curiously. Their eyes gleamed in the hard fluorescent lights like pearls dropped in mud. Jessica did her best to ignore them. Eventually, they got tired of seeing her alternate between standing like a statue and pacing up and down the platform and curled up on a bench next to a phone booth. Jessica sighed and slid to the floor. She leaned her head against the wall and peeled her matted hair away from her face. Eiji was over an hour late. Another train came and went. Jessica looked up to see if any familiar faces would get out. None did. She was about to draw her knees to her chest and rest her head, when she heard a pair of high pitched screams brought her to her feet. The train pulled away, and when it finally passed, Jessica saw something that made her stomach churn. The man wore a greasy old neoprene mask, dark smartglasses, and a tattered gray coat. It hung limply over his muscled shoulders, and ended mid-calf, where his boots began. In his right hand, he held some kind of pistol. In his left, a length of cord. He had backed the two kids into the corner of the phone booth and the back of their bench. "Don't make me waste a trip by shooting you boys." He moved his forearm slightly to the left, and his index finger caressed the trigger. A single shot rang out, shattering one of the wall tiles over the kids' heads. The youngsters clung to each others' dirty, oversized coats and tried to back through the wall. Jessica had heard of this before. Someone with a lot of money and some deviant preferences would hire freelancers and mercenaries like Eiji who were either so desperate to make any kind of fast money or so sick that they actually enjoyed the idea to round up a few of the best looking street people. They had computer equipped smartglasses that could artificially strip away layers of dirt and grime to pick out the best targets and smartcords to leash up their prey. In the winter, subways were easy pickings for scum like the cocky bastard who stood with his back towards her, unaware that she even existed. These were the kind of people Cyber Knights hunted through the shadows of the arcologies. Jessica slowly reached into the folds of her coat and drew her pistol from its holster. She disengaged the safety and rose to her feet. "Hey, asshole!" Jessica's voice echoed off the far wall of the station and down the darkened tunnels. He turned around slowly, raising his pistol, until he saw the barrel pointed directly at him. Jessica braced the gun with both hands and sighted at his chest. "Don't you have someplace better to be?" She took a few steps away from the wall. "You even think about pointing that gun at me, and you're a dead man." "Alright, alright!" He set his gun on the floor and took a step back, holding his hands up. Jessica stood her ground and gestured for him to move away from the two kids. They were frozen in place, trembling visibly. A small puddle was forming underneath them, dripping from a dark stain on the front of one boy's pants. The man stepped sideways once. "Listen lady, this is none of your business. Why don't you just put that gun away and forget this ever happened? These two shits are nothing." Jessica pulled the trigger too hard and jerked her pistol sideways a fraction of a centimeter. The bullet flew wide. It ricocheted off the far wall and ended on the tracks. She took a deep breath and re-aimed. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it. That was what Eiji always told her. "Fuck you," she whispered. Through her respirator, her voice was raspy, and hard. Those two kids were more than he would ever be. "Alright, alright. You win. I don't want to get shot. I'll take my work someplace where there's no psycho cyber knight wannabes to fuck things up. That make you happy, bitch?" He stared at her, holding her gaze as if he could see right through her visor and into her eyes. "If you don't see it, it's fine, is that it?" He shrugged. "Suits me. Either way, I get mine." It was her capacity for details that alerted her to what was happening. A few seconds ago, when she had first fired, her bullet had scraped a gash in the grime that covered the tiled walls. It had been about a meter wide. The distance between his head and the bullet mark was growing. He was getting closer to his gun. He lunged for his gun, diving for the floor. Jessica swung her aim low and fired. The first bullet skipped off the floor, but the ricochet caught him in the shoulder. He missed his gun and slid a couple meters. Jessica fired again. This time she hit him squarely. She squeezed the trigger over and over. Now all her shots hit. The sound of gunfire became a roar as the echoes piled up on top of each other. Her teeth were clenched so tightly that she felt the recoil from each shot jar her head. Jessica emptied the clip into him and kept dry firing for a few seconds before she realized that the thunder had stopped. "Fuck you! Just fuck you!" The adrenaline rush that came with killing the man was fading, but Jessica's heart still pounded and her knuckles still ached from gripping the butt of her pistol so tightly. The kids stared at her, watching her dry fire at the late, would be kiddie- shop sweeper. One of them started to say something, but his companion, the boy who wet his pants, tugged on his sleeve. "Forget it, man, she's fucked." He climbed off the bench and started to slide down the platform, watching Jessica the whole time. His fingertips left little tracks of clean in the greasy tiles. He looked back at his friend. The other boy looked back and forth between Jessica and his companion. "Hey, thanks!" he shouted. His juvenile voice rang lightly off the tunnel walls and startled Jessica. She stopped, and lowered her pistol. Jessica blinked her eyes and looked across the platform at him. The boys turned and ran down the tunnel. Their footsteps left fading echoes that quickly vanished in the underground darkness. The kiddie shop sweeper lay in a heap on the far platform, crumpled and lying in a pool of blood and piss. Just a few months ago, Jessica might have dropped her gun and run, or hid and found a corner to be sick in. She reached into her coat pocket and changed clips. Jessica was tired of predators. She was sick of people being used like animals. He wasn't quite the same as Chiang and her partner, Jenner. Those kids would have wound up in some rich pervert's private collection until they were too told to be cure anymore. Then they would just get thrown out with the rest of the trash. At least Artemis tried to shut her up with money. Either way, killing him made her feel a hell of a lot better. The dull rumble of an approaching train made Jessica jump. Quickly, she stashed her gun in a deep pocket. A knot tied in her gut, and she started to sweat. It ran down the inside of her visor and dripped off her nose, turning black as it gathered the subway grime that clung to her skin. What if someone saw the body? Would they care? Would they think she had killed him? She was too out in the open. That was the first thing Eiji had taught her. Jessica turned and ran for the exit stairs, taking cover behind an old metal turnstile. She loosed her pistol in her pocket and peered around the metal pedestal as the train ground to a loud halt. The train's windows were either busted out and boarded over with a dull, black plastic, or else were so dirty that she could not even make out shapes behind them. Jessica reached up and tapped the small button on the left arm of her visor. Sight modes started to cycle. The starlight system made her shut her eyes as the sudden amplification made round, purple blobs float in front of her, but the infrared system worked. Inside the only occupied car, she made out three forms. One was huge, and it glowed more brightly than a human should. It seemed to be holding up another, slightly dimmer form. The third moved ahead, towards the door. Jessica switched back to normal sight and waited. The car's doors slid open, and Eiji spun out, pistol first. He dropped into a crouch and scanned the area while David helped Callahan out of the train. The man leaning on the cyber knight was pale, and sweat pasted his hair and clothes to his skin. A dark, wet stain had soaked through his right side, and his arm hung limp. The train doors slid shut, and it pulled away. Nobody else got out. Eiji looked towards her hiding spot. "Who's there? Jessie, is that you?" He aimed along the barrel of his gun. "Stand up, nice and slow." Jessica pu her gun away and rose slowly to her feet, holding her hands opem and away from her body. "Eiji, it's me. Put the gun away." Careful not to make any sudden movements, she eased out from around the turnstile and took a step towards him. Eiji dropped his gun. It hit the floor with a louth staccatto and bounced twice. Before she could move again, Eiji flung his arms around her neck, pushing her into the wall. His hands balled into fists, wadding up the folds of her coat. He dug his face into her shoulder and squeezed her so hard it hurt. "Eiji... hey..." Jessica stopped, listening. She wasn't sure if she heard it or not, but she felt it. Eiji's respirator muffled the sound, but Jessica was sure he was sobbing. Gently, she put her arms around her friend and hugged. Eiji's shoulders heaved slightly, and he shook in her embrace. Jessica looked up at David and gestured that she was confused. The cyber knight sat his companion down on the floor against the phone booth, and shook his head. He entered the booth and started to make a call. Jessica noted that his sword was missing. She looked down at Eiji. His hair was matted with grimy sweat. Black tears fell to the pavement, leaving trails of pink skin behind them. "Eiji, what happened? Where's Shinji?" Jessica put her hands on Eiji's shoulders and tried to dislodge him, but couldn't break his grip. "Shinji and Ortiz are lost." David sighed and took Eiji's hands, peeling them away from her body. Eiji resisted for a couple seconds, then went limp. His legs crumpled, and he fell to the floor. He blinked a couple times, squnting in the bright fluorescent lights, then buried his face in his hands. Jessica looked up at David, suddenly feeling sick. The cyber-knight's face was motionless as he scanned the platform. "They were killed covering our escape from the Arcology." He looked down at Eiji, and the back at Jessica. The steady trickle of sweat drizzling down her forehead became a stream, and her stomach churned, threatening to send her into dry heaves. David pointed at Eiji. "What's with him?" David's eyes were masked by the reflective visor of his smartglasses, but she would have found no answers there anyway. His flat black cybereyes gave away no traces of emotion. Jessica looked down at Eiji. His shoulders heaved, and his breath came in ragged gasps between sobs. David looked on, apparently oblivious. Images of that first meeting flashed back into Jessica's mind, appearing as vividly as when they had first happened. Eiji had been rigid, almost mechanical, and cold around them. That Eiji, in the black business suit, wasn't the Eiji she knew. It must have been his secret... something he had not been able to tell David, or anyone else. Jessica looked up at David, who was still standing patiently, waiting for a reply. "They were pretty close." David nodded. "I understand. It's hard to watch a friend die." He turned, and headed for the bench where Callahan sat, wrapped tightly in his coat despite the oppressive heat. "But we need to be going. Rosenberg is on his way to meet us on the street." He helped Callahan to his feet and headed for the stairs. "You bring Eiji. We'll wait upstairs." David hoisted his companion over the turnstile and followed after, disappearing up the stairs. When David was gone, Jessica knelt beside Eiji and touched his shoulder. Eiji hadn't moved falling to that spot. "Eiji, talk to me." She felt sick, like she wanted to puke but had nothing to throw up. She swallowed back the bile in her throat and took a couple deep breaths. Despite her breather mask, the air was sticky, hot, and foul tasting. This wasn't how she had wanted this to end. Not for Eiji. Eiji stayed put, sobbing into his hands. His tears ran down his cheeks and over the outside of his respirator. "He's dead," he croaked. "Fucking dead..." Eiji tried to draw a breath, but only managed a sobbing gasp. Jessica didn't know what to do, so she pulled Eiji close and hugged him fiercely. "It could have happened to any of us. It's not your fault." Eiji flung his arms around her neck and clung to her, choking her between his grip and the stale smell of sweat, blood, and fear that hovered around his body. Eiji bit his lip and looked up at her, blinking away tears. Kneeling in front of her, lean frame shivering despite the hot, soupy air, he looked less like the cool, confident man Jessica knew and more like one of the two kids making their way through the subway tunnel across the station. He shook his head and groaned, hugging himself and rocking back and forth, muttering something incoherent in Japanese. "Jessica, Eiji, it's time to go." Jessica jumped and turned to face him, startled. Her hands were halfway to her gun when the memory of David's voice identified the cyber knight. David was halfway down the stairs. The cyber knight had left his companion outside and returned to get them. Jessica's mnemonic booster replayed the last few seconds automatically. His footfalls made no noise at all. "Rosenberg's here, and he's waiting." David turned and glided back up the stairs, disappearing over the top of the staircase. Eiji didn't resist when Jessica took him by the hand and helped him to his feet. He moved where she moved him, stumbling along beside her as she led him up the stairs. Rosenberg stood, leaning against the front fender of a weathered looking gray conversion van. He was still dressed in a plain, hunter green gym suit, and his wild, unruly white hair suggested that David had roused the doctor from his bed. The van was running. It's powerful halogen lamps cut burning white streams of light through the drifting haze that clung to the city streets. He saw her coming and walked around to the driver's side. The other doors opened automatically, and David climbed into the front passenger's seat. Rosenberg waved Jessica onward when she paused to catch Eiji as he stumbled over a raised block in the sidewalk. "Hurry. We need to get out of here, as soon as possible." Jessica helped Eiji into the van and climbed in after him. He collapsed into the chair on the far side of the van and drew his knees up to his chest, staring at the stained burgundy carpet. No sooner had Jessica sat down when the doors slid shut automatically and the van's powerful gasoline engine roared to life, propelling the heavy vehicle off into the night. Everyone was silent as Rosenberg guided his van through the narrow streets. Except for Rosenberg, everyone seemed to see nothing despite his opened eyes as Jessica scanned the van in between gripping the arms of the chair through Rosenberg's hard, tire screeching turns. David sat up front, cradling a gyrojet rocket launcher in his lap. Across from her, Eiji slumped to the floor, wedged between his chair and Rosenberg's. Callahan lay motionless on the bed in back, staring up at the ceiling and breathing shallowly through his mouth. Nobody spoke. The only sounds were the roar of the big, old engine, Eiji's choked and muffled Japanese, and Callahan's wet, gurgling breaths. Outside, the van plowed through the fog as it tore down the streets before plunging into the glare of the artificial lighting inside the Lincoln Tunnel. Jessica sighed. That they were alive suggested that they got what they had come for. But at what price?